ABC report reveals alleged identity of 'Prisoner X'

An anonymous prisoner who hung himself in Ayalon Prison in December 2010 may be an Australian who made Aliyah and was recruited into the Mossad, according to a report aired on Australia's ABC news on Tuesday night.

The report on ABC's “Foreign Correspondent” program stated that there is strong reason to believe that “Prisoner X” was Melbourne-native Ben Zygier, who went by Ben Alon in Israel. The report states that Zygier was jailed for unknown reasons in early 2010, ten years after he moved to Israel and years after he was recruited into the Mossad. The report also states that Zygier's detention has been one of the most closely-guarded secrets in Israel in recent years, and that the Israeli media unable or willing to report on it and the security establishment has gone to extraordinary lengths to cover up his very existence in prison and the circumstances of his death.

The ABC piece says that Zygier was kept in the same isolation cell built to house Yitzhak Rabin's assassin Yigal Amir, and was kept under constant surveillance until his "apparent suicide." The report quotes an unnamed source as saying that Zygier was working for the Mossad after being recruited as a new immigrant. It also says some that some time after he moved to Israel, Zygier took out a new Australian passport under the name of “Ben Allen," and hints that this may have been so he could travel more inconspicuously in countries hostile to Israel.