Israeli-Iranian ‘dirty war’ nearing point of no return

Bomb blast in New DelhiBy JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
The ongoing intelligence war between Israel and Iran appears to be reaching unprecedented levels following the exposure earlier this week of a simultaneous bombing campaign against Israeli targets in Europe and Asia. The wife of Israel’s Defense Attaché in New Delhi, India, was among four people injured on Monday, after a magnetic bomb attached to her car exploded just 500 yards from the gates of the Israeli embassy. Three thousand miles away, in Tbilisi, Georgia, a sharp-eyed employee of the Israeli embassy there discovered a bomb attached to a diplomatic car; the device was eventually diffused by Georgian counterterrorist authorities. A few hours later, the government of Thailand announced that two Iranian nationals had been detained following an explosion at a rented house in the capital Bangkok, which critically injured one of the arrestees. A second man was reportedly arrested in Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport while he was trying to board a flight to Malaysia. At least two other men, also Iranian nationals, remain at large, though Thai officials suspect they have already fled to Iran. (Update: Thai authorities have confirmed the bombers’ targets were Israeli diplomats). Speaking anonymously to Bloomberg news agency, US intelligence officials said that operations directed at Israeli targets were also “disrupted” in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, as well as in Bulgaria. Observers have also noted that the attack that injured the wife of the Israeli diplomat was carried out in one of Israel’s strongest allies in Asia, thus delivering a two-fold message to both Tel Aviv and New Delhi. India’s Home Affairs Minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, told journalists yesterday that the attack in the Indian capital was conducted by a “well trained” motorcyclist, who attached “a magnetic device” to the car before speeding away. Read more of this post

News you may have missed #584

Nicky Hager

Nicky Hager

►►Billing dispute reveals details of secret CIA flights. On August 12, 2003, a conracted Gulfstream IV aircraft carrying six passengers took off from Dulles International Airport for Bangkok. When it returned four days later, it carried Indonesian terrorist Riduan Isamuddin, who had been captured in Thailand and would spend the next three years in various secret CIA prisons. The Gulfstream IV’s itinerary, as well as the $339,228 price tag for the journey, are among the details of shadowy CIA flights that have emerged in a New York courthouse, in a billing dispute between contractors. Incidentally, even the airplanes’ owners didn’t always know that the CIA was using them.
►►French admit secret service spied on reporter. French interior minister Claude Guéant has admitted that the secret service spied on investigative reporter Gérard Davet, from the newspaper Le Monde, in order to trace the source of a leak about the so-called “Bettencourt party funding scandal“, which has been a source of embarrassment for President Nicolas Sarkozy’s party.
►►NZ let Israeli spies go free in return for passports. Another revelation from Nicky Hager’s book Other People’s Wars (see previous intelNews coverage here). The investigative reporter claims that New Zealand’s Security Intelligence Service released captured Mossad spies Eli Cara and Uriel Zoshe Kelman, in return for Read more of this post

Sri Lankan forces score massive intelligence victory against LTTE

Prabhakaran

Prabhakaran

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Not only does the Sri Lankan government appear to be scoring a massive tactical victory in its 25-year military confrontation with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), it is also well on its way to smashing the LTTE’s intelligence infrastructure. Nearly the entire LTTE leadership, including the organization’s revered founder, Vellupillai Prabhakaran, has been physically exterminated during the government’s ongoing military offensive. What is more, Sri Lankan intelligence agents, in collaboration with INTERPOL, managed to arrest last week LTTE’s new leader, Selvarajah Pathmanathan, also known as “KP”. Read more of this post

Australian espionage convict leaving US for home

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
An Australian former intelligence officer who was arrested by the FBI for trying to sell classified US defense documents will be allowed to serve the remaining of his prison sentence in Victoria, Australia. Jean-Philippe Wispelaere was an employee of Australia’s Defence Intelligence Organisation, the agency responsible for assessing and relaying intelligence information to Australian government officials. In 1999, he resigned from his job and flew to Bangkok, Thailand, where he contacted embassy officials of a third country (rumored to be Singapore) and offered to sell them over 700 pages of classified US documents. Read more of this post

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