Cairo – An Egyptian court has sentenced a man to ten years in prison for a conviction on charges that he spied for Israel, AFP reported on Sunday.
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Mohamed Ali Abdel Baki, a shipping manager at the Suez Canal, was convicted of passing his Israeli handlers information about the movement of Egyptian and foreign warships, particularly Iranian ships, through the canal. The Port Said court also convicted in absentia the man’s two alleged Israeli handlers to life in prison.
Baki allegedly made contact with the Israeli spies over the Internet in 2011 and later met them at the Israeli Embassy in Bangkok in 2012.
Egyptian prosecutors also claimed that Baki had also offered to give information about shipping movements to Iran, Syria and Hezbollah.
Two Iranian warships passed through the canal in 2011 in what Israel described as a “provocation.”
The ships, which docked in a Syrian port before making the return trip, had been the first Iranian ships to go through the canal since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Two additional Iranian ships made the trip a year later in February 2012.
Content is provided courtesy of the Jerusalem Post