Haifa district prosecutors and lawyers for Amir Mahoul, charged with spying for Hizbullah, signed a plea bargain Wednesday after negotiations were held between both sides. The plea bargain is subject to the approval of the Haifa District Court.
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admitted to, and was convicted of, contact with a foreign agent, aiding
an enemy in war, and espionage - all stemming from his activities and
contact with Hizbullah.
The prosecution will request to impose on Makhoul
a punishment of 10 years in prison, while the defense will try to lower the
sentence to seven years, with probation to be determined by the discretion of the court.
Mahoul was charged in May of this year with espionage, assisting an enemy in time of war and maintaining contact with an enemy agent.
The state's indictment charged that Mahoul sent 10 messages to his
Hizbullah contacts that included information on the location of the Shin
Bet offices in Jalama and Haifa, with their exact addresses, and the
locations of the Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. plant on the
Acre-Haifa highway, Mossad facilities in the center of the country and
the Nahshonim military base, which the indictment describes as an
American base, and the home address of Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin.
According to a senior security official, Mahoul was also asked by
Hizbullah to collect information on the security arrangements
surrounding the convoys of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense
Minister Ehud Barak. He did not succeed in this mission, the security
official said.
Mahoul is an author and head of Ittijah – The Union of Arab Community-Based Associations, also based in Haifa.