Plea bargain for Danish 'Hizbullah spy'

Iyad al-Ashwah convicted of conspiring to deliver information to enemy; court asked to sentence him to 33-month prison term
Vered Luvitch

The Tel Aviv District Court on Wednesday morning convicted Iyad al-Ashwah, a Danish citizen born in Lebanon, of conspiring to deliver information to the enemy and to its benefit.

Al-Ashwah, 44, confessed to the offense and was convicted as part of a plea bargain. Other offenses of conspiring to commit a crime and attempting to aid the enemy during wartime were erased from the original indictment.

The parties to the plea bargain asked the court to sentence al-Ashwah to a 33-month prison term.

According to the amended indictment, Al-Ashwah contacted a person who presented himself as a representative of the Hizbullah organization in Lebanon. In return for USD 2,000, al-Ashwah agreed to arrive in Israel in order to locate potential military targets and suitable people to recruit to Hizbullah.

Al-Ashwah arrived in Israel about a year ago with his Danish passport and stayed at his cousins' house at the Arab village of Tarshiha in northern Israel for eight days. He tried to rent a car in order to locate military targets and considered giving his cousins' names to Hizbullah.

Initially accused of filming sensitive sites

At first, al-Ashwah was accused of taking a train from Akko to Tel Aviv, while filming from the cabin window in order to deliver evidential material to Hizbullah.

According to the amended indictment, however, the filming in the train was not part of al-Ashwah's intelligence gathering and there was reasonable doubt that he did it only in order to document his visit. In addition, no documentation of sensitive sites in terms of intelligence was found.

Al-Ashwah's sentence is expected to be handed down at the end of the month.