Indicted for handing Hamas sensitive information
Three men from Israel have been indicted for allegedly sending a large volume of sensitive security-related material to the Hamas terror group in Turkey, according to a joint statement by the Israeli Police, the State Prosecutor’s Office and the Shin Bet security agency. A charge sheet filed on Thursday alleges that the trio committed “grave security offenses” and rendered the infrastructure of one of the country’s largest telecommunications companies vulnerable to a potential cyber-attack during a future war, the Times of Israel reported.
One defendants, identified in the indictment as ‘Resh Ayi’ (anonymised by his Hebrew initials) has worked for Cellcom since 2004 as a software engineer. In 2017, his “ideological identification with Hamas and its goals,” moved him to meet officials from the Palestinian terror group while visiting Turkey.
He is accused of handing them sensitive information, accrued though his engineering experience, on the communications infrastructure in Israel. In 2020 and 2021, at Hamas’s request, the employee asked ‘Shin Ayin’, a freelance adviser to Cellcom on computer and communications networks, to hand him information on the infrastructure’s weak points, informing his that this was for use by Hamas.
The two employees had also conspired since 2015 to try to paralyse Cellcom’s networks in wartime, being aware the networks are used by military and police forces. They are indicted in the case along with Resh Ayin’s brother, who met Hamas officials on his behalf at least three times. They “endangered national security in a concrete and grave way,” according to the security forces’ statement, but their plans have now been foiled by the security services.