Israel has arrested and indicted a former government minister on charges of spying for Iran, the country’s internal security services have said.

Gonen Segev, who worked as energy and infrastructure minister in the 1990s, “was recruited and acted as an agent on behalf of Iranian intelligence”, police and the Israel Security Agency, better known as the Shin Bet, said in a statement on Monday.



He was detained in May “on suspicion of committing offences of assisting the enemy in war and spying against the state of Israel” and indicted on Friday for multiple charges of “transferring information to the enemy”, the statement said.

It said Segev was first in contact with officials at the Iranian embassy in Nigeria in 2012 and that he twice met Iranian “operators” knowing they were from Iranian intelligence.

He allegedly met more Iranian spies around the world at hotels and apartments and had received a “secret communications system” to help him encrypt messages.

Accusing him of providing information on security sites in Israel including buildings and officials in political and security organisations, the statement said Segev also passed on material related to the energy sector.

A trained physician who held the rank of captain in the Israeli military, Segev found his public standing soured when he was arrested in 2004 for attempting to smuggle tens of thousands of ecstasy pills from the Netherlands to Israel, allegedly using an expired diplomatic passport.

He left the country in 2007 after his release from prison and has since lived in west Africa.



The police and Shin Bet said they rearrested Segev after he attempted to fly to Equatorial Guinea in May. He was refused entry and extradited to Israel where he remains in custody.

It said the 62-year-old had introduced other Israeli citizens, some connected to the country’s security and foreign relations establishment, to Iranian intelligence officers who he presented as “regular businessmen”. It did not say if other Israelis were under investigation.

Segev’s lawyers did not immediately comment.

Israel has long fought Iranian-supported militant groups, including Hezbollah in Lebanon to the north and Hamas in Gaza to the south, and the two countries have a history of espionage.

In April, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said security services had managed to retrieve half a tonne of material on Iran’s nuclear programme from a warehouse in Tehran.