State prosecutors filed an indictment on Thursday against Ahmad Daas, 27, an Israeli citizen from Tira, accusing him of maintaining contact with a hostile foreign agent and passing information to the enemy with intent to harm state security during wartime.
The indictment, filed to the Central District Court in Lod, charges Daas with contact with a foreign agent and four counts of passing information to the enemy with intent to harm state security.
According to the indictment, Daas was employed as a truck driver for a transport company, a job that required him to travel throughout the country, including to sensitive sites for loading and unloading work. Prosecutors allege that he used those work routes to carry out documentation tasks for a hostile foreign agent, whom he knew was operating against Israel.
The alleged contact took place between mid-March and April, during the war with Iran. Tehran had fired more than 200 ballistic missiles at military and civilian targets in Israel, killing 15 people, wounding 1,050 others, and causing significant property damage.
The indictment says the foreign agent initially used the name “Abu Bakr” on Telegram, later also using the name “Nasser Kadem,” and moved the conversation with Daas to the encrypted messaging app Session. The agent allegedly told Daas he lived in Iraq, asked him to photograph “important places” and places where Jews gather, and specifically sought documentation of IDF bases and other strategic locations.
Prosecutors allege that Daas sent the agent locations and footage of sensitive sites, including Ashdod Port, a power station in Ashdod, the Israel Aerospace Industries building in Ashdod from different angles, and Tira and its police station. In one exchange, after sending a location in northern Israel, Daas allegedly told the agent that the spot was where the Shayetet 13 naval commando unit was based and that training took place there.
The indictment further alleges that Daas did not merely send images passively, but understood the purpose of the documentation. Prosecutors say he knew the foreign agent wanted the sites to be struck and intended that they be harmed as a result of the material he sent.
Prosecutors: Suspect had hostile ideology toward Israel
In one exchange cited in the indictment, the agent asked Daas whether there were new sites. Daas allegedly replied that there were, but said he would not send them yet because he was waiting for “results” at the place he had already documented, adding that he wanted that location to be the first target.
Unlike several recent Iran-linked cases in which suspects were allegedly recruited for payment, prosecutors say Daas rejected the agent’s offer of money. According to the indictment, he did so because he was acting out of ideological hostility toward Israel.
The case was investigated by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) and Israel Police. The indictment joins a widening series of cases in which Israeli authorities have alleged that Iranian or Iran-linked actors used Telegram, encrypted messaging applications, cryptocurrency, and online “work” offers to recruit Israeli citizens and residents for intelligence-gathering, sabotage-related, or propaganda missions inside the country.
In prior cases, suspects were accused of photographing military-linked or strategic sites, sending live locations, filming missile impact areas, collecting personal or sensitive data, and carrying out assignments that began as apparently simple documentation tasks before escalating into more serious security allegations.
The Shin Bet has warned that such recruitment efforts have sharply intensified during the war. In its annual report published in January, the agency said 25 Israelis and foreign residents were indicted in 2025 for spying for Iran, while 120 separate Iranian espionage incidents were thwarted that year.