"Quoting unidentified officials within the Israeli penitentiary service, [the YNet article] disclosed that Mr. X was being held in Unit 15, a wing of Ayalon prison that contains a single cell.



He is not though to receive any visitors and his wing is cut off from the rest of the prison by double iron doors. So hermetic are the conditions in which he is held that other prisoners can neither see nor hear him.



"He is simply a person without a name and without an identity who has been placed in total and utter isolation from the outside world," a prison official was quoted as saying."

"I suspect that ASIO approached Zygier during this period and notified him that they had compelling evidence he was a Mossad operative. From here on in, it could be that by using whatever leverage at their disposal, ASIO “turned” Zygier and he essentially became caught between the two services. Perhaps in return for not making the story public, and as a means to protect his family, Zygier elected to spy for Australia reporting on his activities within the Mossad. It may also be conjectured that through some incident, his activities drew the suspicion of the Mossad and his role as a “double” was revealed. It would appear that whatever transpired was as much an embarrassment Australia as it was for Israel."

The world has been captivated this past week by the strange saga of Ben Zygier, Israel's so-called "Prisoner X" - an apparently high-value prisoner held at Israel's Ayalon prison under a false name until he allegedly hanged himself in December 2010. I have been following the story with some perplexity; I was in Israel during the summer of 2010, when the existence of "Prisoner X" was inadvertently revealed via a passing reference in an online YNet article, but I honestly have no recollection of the media storm that the revelation created. It has only been this weekend, when I've finally had time to sit and read up on it that I feel I've been able to grasp what's been going on . . .The basic story is as follows: the existence of a mysterious, unnamed prisoner being held in the high-security Ayalon prison was originally revealed in a YNet article published in the summer of 2010. Israel's domestic intelligence service apparently obtained a media gag order on the story, and the original article was pulled from the web within hours of being posted. But the public's curiosity, both in Israel and around the world was aroused: who was this mysterious prisoner? Why was he being held incommunicado? The details published in the YNet piece were certainly tantalizing . . . As summarized by Richard Spencer and Adrian Blomfield, writing for The Telegraph The story was quite a conundrum. A modern-day "Man in the Iron Mask": identity-less, unseen, unheard . . . At the time, opinions were rife about Prisoner X's identity. The "journalist" Richard Silverstein (he of the oft-vaunted, but frequently wrong, anonymous sources) insisted that Prisoner X was an Iranian general, abducted by the Mossad while on a trip to Turkey . (As the narrator to the ABC investigative piece on Prisoner X somewhat snarkily put it, see below, Silverstein's theory "went nowhere.") Others, apparently much closer to the mark, saw Prisoner X's case as somehow involving espionage. Regardless of the theories, the media gag-order effectively ended Israeli reporting on the case, and so, as no one else was talking/reporting, the whole thing remained a mystery.Until this past Tuesday, that is, when the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) published a story and ran an investigative report (see below) naming Ben Zygier, an Australian national who had immigrated to Israel in 1994, as Prisoner X. The revelation threw many segments of the media, blogosphere, and Israeli public into an uproar, reignited interest in the two-year-old mystery, and created a host of new and curious questions. Prisoner X now had a name, but the crime Ben Zygier allegedly committed remained - and remains - unexplained.The espionage angle, however, appears to currently be the favored theory as to why Zygier was imprisoned in such solitary conditions. Zygier, apparently, was involved with the Mossad, Israel's secretive national intelligence organization, and he may have been involved in efforts by the agency to obtain false passports - specifically, Australian passports - for its operatives.In a story in the Weekly Standard , ex-Mossad operative Michael Ross describes the Mossad's need for travel and identity documents as the agency's "Achilles heel," explaining that, unlike the spooks of most Western intelligence services, Israeli operatives typically cannot travel to the locations where they most need to conduct intelligence gathering and espionage activity using Israeli documentation. Aside from Egypt and Jordan, no Arab or Muslim country - particularly long-standing Israeli enemies like Iran, Lebanon, and Syria - will permit Israeli citizens with Israeli passports to enter. Indeed, those traveling to the Middle East with plans of traveling to both Israel and to some of the surrounding Arab countries should typically have Israeli customs agents stamp a separate sheet of paper rather than a passport page; some of the Arab countries will, supposedly, turn you away at the border if you are found to have traveled to Israel beforehand.Anyway, Mr. Ross speculates that Zygier was involved in Mossad attempts to obtain false Australian passport documents - a mission that was fraught with risk, since, in 2004, two Mossad agents were arrested in Australia for doing precisely the same thing. Ross continues I'm no expert on espionage (or am I? *shifty eyes.* No, no I'm not), but, to me at least, Mr. Ross's theory sounds very plausible.Still, many questions remain, and, with luck, the world will get some more answers soon: today, the Israeli Knesset Intelligence Subcommittee agreed to undertake an independent investigation into Ben Zygier's jailing and suicide. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu defended Israel's treatment of Zygier , insisting that Israel is "an exemplary democracy and maintain[s] the rights of those under investigation," but that the country is also "more threatened and face[s] more challenges; [and], therefore, [] must maintain proper activity of [its] security agencies.”I, for one, am quite curious as to where this case will go, and will try to keep my eyes and ears open for developments. For now, though, let's go to that videotape promised in the title to this post: the original Australian Broadcasting Company investigative report, for anyone interested.