Israeli spies ‘infiltrate’ Johannesburg airport
By Jonathan Cook, Foreign Correspondent
The National [Abu Dhabi], November 22, 2009
NAZARETH, Israel // South Africa deported an Israeli airline
official last week following allegations that Israel’s secret
police, the Shin Bet, had infiltrated Johannesburg international
airport in an effort to gather information on South African
citizens, particularly black and Muslim travellers.
The move by the South African government followed an
investigation by local TV showing an undercover reporter being
illegally interrogated by an official with El Al, Israel’s national
carrier, in a public area of Johannesburg’s OR Tambo airport.
The programme also featured testimony from Jonathan Garb, a former
El Al guard, who claimed that the airline company had been a front
for the Shin Bet in South Africa for many years.
Of the footage of the undercover reporter’s questioning, he
commented: “Here is a secret service operating above the law in
South Africa. We pull the wool over everyone’s eyes. We do exactly
what we want. The local authorities do not know what we are doing.”
The Israeli foreign ministry is reported to have sent a team to
South Africa to try to defuse the diplomatic crisis after the
government in Johannesburg threatened to deport all of El Al’s
security staff.
Mr Garb’s accusations have been supported by an investigation by
the regulator for South Africa’s private security industries.
They have also been confirmed by human rights groups in Israel,
which report that Israeli security staff are carrying out racial
profiling at many airports around the world, apparently out of sight
of local authorities.
Concern in South Africa about the activities of El Al staff has been
growing since August, when South Africa’s leading investigative news
show, Carte Blanche, went undercover to test Mr Garb’s allegations.
A hidden camera captured an El Al official in the departure hall
claiming to be from “airport security” and demanding that the
undercover reporter hand over his passport or ID as part of “airport
regulations”. When the reporter protested that he was not flying but
waiting for a friend, El Al’s security manager, identified as Golan
Rice, arrived to interrogate him further. Mr Rice then warned him
that he was in a restricted area and must leave.
Mr Garb commented on the show: “What we are trained is to look
for the immediate threat – the Muslim guy. You can think he is a
suicide bomber, he is collecting information. The crazy thing is
that we are profiling people racially, ethnically and even on
religious grounds … This is what we do.”
Mr Garb and two other fired workers have told the South African
media that Shin Bet agents routinely detain Muslim and black
passengers, a claim that has ignited controversy in a society still
suffering with the legacy of decades of apartheid rule.
Suspect individuals, the former workers say, are held in an annex
room, where they are interrogated, often on matters unrelated to
airport security, and can be subjected to strip searches while their
luggage is taken apart. Clandestine searches of their belongings and
laptops are also carried out to identify useful documents and
information.
All of this is done in violation of South African law, which
authorises only the police, armed forces or personnel appointed by
the transport minister to carry out searches.
The former staff also accuse El Al of smuggling weapons –
licensed to the local Israeli embassy – into the airport for use by
the secret agents.
Mr Garb went public after he was dismissed over a campaign he led
for better pay and medical benefits for El Al staff.
A South African Jew, he said he was recruited 19 years ago by the
Shin Bet. “We were trained at a secret camp [in Israel] where they
train Israeli special forces and they train you how to use handguns,
submachine guns and in unarmed combat.”
Mr Garb claimed to have profiled 40,000 people for Israel over
the past 20 years, including recently Virginia Tilley, a Middle East
expert who is the chief researcher at South Africa’s Human Sciences
Research Council. The think tank recently published a report
accusing Israel of apartheid and colonialism in the Palestinian
territories.
“The decision was she should be checked in the harshest way because
of her connections,” Mr Garb said.
Ms Tilley confirmed that she had been detained at the airport by
El Al staff and separated from her luggage. Mr Garb said that during
this period an agent “photo-copied all [her] documentation and then
he forwarded it on to Israel” – Mr Garb believes for use by the Shin
Bet.
Israeli officials have refused to comment on the allegations. A
letter produced by Mr Garb – signed by Roz Bukris, El Al’s general
manager in South Africa – suggests that he was employed by the Shin
Bet rather than the airline. Ms Bukris, according to the programme,
refused to confirm or deny the letter’s validity.
The Israeli Embassy in South Africa declined to discuss evidence
that it, rather than El Al, had licensed guns issued to the
airline’s security managers. Questioned last week by Ynet, Israel’s
largest news website, about the deportation of the airline official,
Yossi Levy, an Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said he could not
“comment on security matters”.
A report published in 2007 by two Israeli human rights
organisations, the Nazareth-based Arab Association for Human Rights
and the Centre Against Racism, found that Israeli airline staff used
racial profiling at most major airports around the world, subjecting
Arab and Muslim passengers to discriminatory and degrading treatment
in violation both of international law and the host country’s laws.
“Our research showed that the checks conducted by El Al at
foreign airports had all the hallmarks of Shin Bet interrogations,”
said Mohammed Zeidan, the director of the Human Rights Association.
“Usually the questions were less about the safety of the flight and
more aimed at gathering information on the political activities or
sympathies of the passengers.”
The human rights groups approached four international airports – in
New York, Paris, Vienna and Geneva – where passengers said they had
been subjected to discriminatory treatment, to ask under what
authority the Israeli security services were operating. The first
two airports refused to respond, while Vienna and Geneva said it was
not possible to oversee El Al’s procedures.
