A former Israeli minister has been sentenced to 11 years in prison on Tuesday for spying for regional rival\u00a0Iran, the prosecutor said, after admitting to the charges last month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gonen Segev was\u00a0convicted in January\u00a0when the Israeli justice ministry said he reached a plea deal after confessing to severe espionage and passing information to an enemy country with the purpose of harming\u00a0Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prosecutor Geula Cohen confirmed to journalists outside the Jerusalem court that the judge had accepted the plea bargain and issued the sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Segev, energy minister from 1995 to 1996, was indicted in June. The Shin Bet internal security service said at the time that he was recruited by Iranian intelligence while living in Nigeria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Investigators found that Segev made contact with officials at the Iranian embassy in Nigeria in 2012 and that he visited Iran twice for meetings with his handlers, the Shin Bet said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Segev, who was extradited from Equatorial Guinea and arrested in May, was charged with providing Iran information about “energy market and security sites in Israel”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ministry said there was a gag order on further details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Segev, a physician, was\u00a0jailed in 2004\u00a0for attempting to smuggle “Ecstasy” pills into Israel and left the country in 2007 after his release from prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Segev served in the Labour government of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin after defecting from the far right to cast the decisive vote in favour of the Oslo II peace agreement with the Palestinians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Israel has long been locked in a shadow war with Iran, which supports armed groups in the\u00a0Gaza Strip\u00a0and Lebanon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Iran has accused Israel of sabotage and assassinations of scientists involved in its nuclear programme.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A former Israeli minister has been sentenced to 11 years in prison on Tuesday for spying for regional rival\u00a0Iran, the prosecutor said, after admitting to the charges last month. Gonen Segev was\u00a0convicted in January\u00a0when the Israeli justice ministry said he reached a plea deal after confessing to severe espionage and passing information to an enemy country with the purpose of… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3161,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3160\/revisions\/3161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}