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Prosecutors Demand Retrial of Egyptian on Charges of Spying for Israel
Egyptian state security prosecutors on Thursday demanded retrial of an Egyptian who was acquitted earlier this month on charges of spying for Israel.
The state security prosecutors said that "there were several procedural violations and errors in the enforcement of law" in the verdict on acquittal of Mohamad al-Filali, a 34-year-old engineer, the state-run Middle East News Agency reported.
Filali had been charged of gathering information on Egyptian military equipment, tourism, agriculture and other subjects, in collaboration with former Russian officer Gregory Gifens, for Israel's Mossad intelligence agency.
But an Egyptian higher state security court on June 13 issued the ruling on acquitting Filali while sentencing the Russian who was tried in absentia to life imprisonment.
Filali was acquitted as he did not know that the Russian was a Mossad agent and as soon as he suspected something, he informed the Egyptian authorities.
Egyptian intelligence service last September informed the state security prosecution that Filali was enlisted by the Russian in Spain to work for the Israeli secret service and was trained by two Israeli intelligence officers.
Filali was instructed to film several Egyptian military sites and collect information on the country's weaponry development and an agricultural project.
Several computer discs storing political, military and economic information on Egypt, as well as special equipments used in contacting Mossad agents, were seized in Filali's apartment, according to the prosecution's investigation.
The espionage case came amid cooling of ties between Egypt and Israel. Egypt, the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with the Jewish state in 1979, recalled in November its ambassador from Tel Aviv in protest of Israel's excessive use of force against the Palestinians.
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