Report: Deadly NZ Quake Uncovers Israeli Spy Ring

Clockwise from left: Ofer Mizrahi (died), Ofer Levy (died), Gabi Ingel (died), Liron Sade, Guy Jordan and Michael Fraidman.

The SIS is probing suspicious activities of several groups of Israelis during and immediately after the Christchurch earthquake. Fred Tulett investigates.

The police national computer has been under scrutiny in the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake in February because of fears Israeli agents loaded software into the system that would allow backdoor access to highly sensitive intelligence files.

The Security Intelligence Service ordered the checks as part of an urgent investigation of what one SIS officer described as the suspicious activities of several groups of Israelis during and immediately after the earthquake.

Three Israelis were among the 181 people who died when the earthquake destroyed most of Christchurch’s central business district on February 22. One was found to be carrying at least five passports.

An unaccredited Israeli search and rescue squad was later confronted by armed New Zealand officers and removed from the sealed off “red zone” of the central city.

The response of the Israeli government to the three deaths appears extraordinary. In the hours after the 6.3 quake struck:

* Prime Minister John Key fielded the first of four calls that day from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

* Israel’s Ambassador in the South Pacific, Shemi Tzur, who is based in Australia, booked flights to Christchurch, where he visited the morgue.

* Israel’s civil defence chief left Israel for Christchurch.

* A complete Israeli urban search and rescue squad was assembled and flown to Christchurch, arriving at about the same time as . . .

* Three people who had smashed their way out of a van crushed by a concrete pillar in the central city, leaving a fourth person dead in the vehicle, arrived back in Israel.

Those four Israelis – Ofer Benyamin Mizrahi, 23, from Kibbutz Magal near Haifa, Michal Fraidman, Liron Sade and Guy Jordan – would later become a prime focus of the SIS investigation, along with the Israeli search and rescue squad and a group of forensic analysts from Israel that worked in the Christchurch morgue helping to identify earthquake victims.

The four, two men and two women, had been shopping in the central city on the morning of the earthquake and had returned to their van, parked in Gloucester St, when the quake hit. Mizrahi, the driver, was killed instantly and Jordan, in the front passenger seat, smashed a window and climbed through the hole to escape. The two women, Fraidman and Sade, who were sitting in the back seat, also managed to crawl out.

They were unable to reach Mizrahi and, after taking photographs of the crushed van, made their way to Latimer Square, where Israeli officials had set up an emergency meeting point. Within 12 hours they had left New Zealand.

On Sunday February 26 Mizrahi’s body was recovered from the van and taken to the morgue where, during routine identity checks, he was found to be carrying at least five passports.

Meanwhile, the search and rescue squad dispatched from Israel had arrived in Christchurch but the offer of help was rejected by New Zealand authorities because the squad did not have accreditation from the United Nations.

According to Israeli newspaper reports the squad was being funded by the parents of two other Israelis killed in the earthquake, Ofer Levy and Gabi Ingel, both 22, who were said to be in New Zealand on a backpacking holiday. The parents made repeated public appeals for the Israeli team to join the rescue, appeals that were dismissed by the New Zealand authorities until squad members were discovered in the sealed-off “red zone” of the central city.

It is understood the squad members were confronted by armed New Zealand police officers and removed from the area. That confrontation is understood to have led to intense diplomatic exchanges between New Zealand and Israel, though police have refused to comment on the incident or even acknowledge that it occurred, and the Israeli ambassador says he had not been advised of any such incident.

Another Israeli group, a forensic analysis team sent by the Israeli government, was welcomed in Christchurch and worked on victim identification in the morgue. However, the SIS also began to have suspicions about this group when it began investigating possible links between the cache of passports found with Mizrahi, the immediate flight of his three companions, the high-powered Israeli interest shown in the earthquake, the unexplained behaviour of the supposed “search and rescue squad” and a mysterious seventh Israeli, in New Zealand illegally, who was first reported missing in the quake and then, weeks later, was reported to have left the country. When it was realised the forensic analysts could have accessed the national police computer database, an urgent security audit was ordered.

The SIS officer said it would take moments for a USB drive to be inserted in a police computer terminal, loaded with a programme allowing remote backdoor access.

“If it had been done it would eventually have given the Israelis access to all of our intelligence.”

The national database holds all records of convictions, firearms licences, lost and stolen property, criminal behaviour and identifying marks and observations taken by police. It is capable of sophisticated searching and data matching.

The officer said an audit had not identified any suspicious files, but a wider SIS investigation contined.

“It all looks suspicious, but a lot of what the Israelis do raises suspicion.”

Intelligence agencies have become hypersensitive to sophisticated hacking after the malware “agent.btz” was infiltrated into the computer systems of United States Military Command three years ago. The US believes Russian agents were responsible and Deputy Defence Secretary William Lynn has described it as “a digital beachhead” for a foreign intelligence agency to attempt to steal data. Attempts to remove the malware have so far been unsuccessful – new, more potent variations of agent.btz are still appearing.

The SIS officer said the agency was also aware of a comment posted on the website of the Russian newspaper Pravda that the Christchurch earthquake had disrupted an Israeli spy base in the city.

Fairfax Media asked police national headquarters for comment on the actions and activities of various Israeli groups after the earthquake. After nine days police issued a brief statement, attributed to Assistant Commissioner Malcolm Burgess, confirming that three Israelis had died in the earthquake, that the van in which Mizrahi died had been recovered and examined, that police had not been involved in the decision to exclude the Israeli search squad, and that “police do not discuss or disclose details of personal effects found with any of the 181 victims”.

Ambassador Tzur said it was “science fiction” that any Mossad agents had been involved.

– Taranaki Daily News