No prison sentence for Brodsky

Germany likely to fine alleged Mossad agent for passport forgery.

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT
Brodsky 311 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Brodsky 311
(photo credit: Courtesy)
BERLIN – Alleged Israeli Mossad agent Uri Brodsky will probably be slapped with a financial penalty instead of incarceration, Rainer Wolf, a spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office in Cologne, told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday.
According to Wolf, the Polish authorities plan to extradite Brodsky to Germany on Friday, and a hearing is set for that morning regarding his alleged involvement in illegally securing a German passport for another man, which purportedly enabled the second man to travel to Dubai in January and participate in the killing of senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh When asked if the prosecutor had sufficient evidence to convict Brodsky of illegally obtaining a passport, Wolf told the Post that “if it were to come to a trial” the prosecutor could prove Brodsky improperly obtained the German passport.
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Wolf said the hearing on Friday is slated to address whether Brodsky will be remanded to pre-trial confinement. The prosecutor said “it is not necessary” that Brodsky be incarcerated and that bail is an option.
Brodsky is represented by two German attorneys and a third attorney in Tel Aviv.
The German attorneys asked to not be identified at this time.
German media reported that Brodsky used the name Alexander Verin when he helped a second alleged Mossad agent at a Cologne passport agency, who represented himself as Michael Bodenheimer, the son of a German Jew named Hans Bodenheimer.
Under German law, German Jews who were stripped of their citizenship or fled the Third Reich, and their descendants, have a right to German citizenship.
The German authorities initially charged Brodsky with espionage activity in the Federal Republic and forgery of a passport. A Polish court ruled on July 7 that Brodsky could be extradited to Germany based on the passport forgery charge, but not because of secret service intelligence operations in the Federal Republic.
In a statement to the Post on Wednesday, the German federal prosecutor’s office in Karlsruhe wrote that because the Polish court expunged the espionage allegation, the federal prosecutor no longer had jurisdiction over the Brodsky case.
The actual identity of the Israeli is unclear. He appears to have used several names.
Wolf, from the Cologne public prosecutor’s office, said the process could last between 30 and 60 days. He said that the allegation of a forged passport involving a family member of a Holocaust survivor is the first such case for public prosecutor’s office. According to Wolf, if Brodsky is fined, his prison time in Poland could be taken into consideration to reduce the amount.
An editorial in last week’s Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung, a left-wing daily reaching more than 1.1 million readers daily, argued for a harsh penalty against Brodsky and expressed disappointment that Germany cannot prosecute him for espionage.