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Turkish media publishes photos of 15 men arrested as alleged Mossad spies
Nobody over there considered the idea that this might be a Palestinian Authority operation? [IsraelTimes] Sabah daily releases mugshots of the suspects, apparently taken by Turkish authorities and accompanied by initials purporting to represent their names.Turkey’s Sabah daily on Monday published photos of 15 men that the newspaper alleges spied for Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency and were arrested by authorities earlier this month. The photos appear to be mugshots of the men taken by Turkish authorities and are accompanied by initials claiming to represent their names. No further details were reported by the paper. According to a Sabah report last week, the arrests took place on October 7, following a year-long National Intelligence Organization (MIT) operation involving some 200 Turkish intelligence officers who tracked down the alleged spies. The suspects, said to be of Arab descent, operated in groups of three, the report said. Some had met with Mossad agents in Croatia and Switzerland, where information was exchanged. They had also received orders in the Romanian capital of Bucharest and Kenya’s Nairobi. The five groups had operated in different areas of the country, Sabah reported. The chairman of the powerful Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Saturday said none of the 15 were Mossad agents. MK Ram Ben-Barak, a former deputy director of the Mossad, also suggested the Turkish government is eager to show its intelligence “achievements,” resulting in the occasional publication of false information. “None of the published names were [of] Israeli spies and therefore, it should be put in proportion,” he told Channel 12. Sabah, which is close to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Friday conducted an interview with one of the detainees, whom it identified only by his initials, M.A.S. There has been no official confirmation from Turkey on the arrests and it was not clear how the paper interviewed the man if he had been arrested. “I met face to face with a Mossad official. He taught me to encrypt files on the laptop,” M.A.S. told Sabah. Related: Sabah: 2021-10-24 Former Mossad deputy denies detainees in Turkey are Israeli spies Sabah: 2021-10-24 Alleged Turkish Mossad spy describes unwitting recruitment, training in Zurich Sabah: 2021-10-22 15 Arab, Palestinian Mossad spies arrested in Turkey - report Posted by: trailing wife 2021-10-26 |
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