Report: Jordanian Mossad Man Involved in Ethiopian Plane 'Blast'
Authorities in Mauritania have exposed a major Israeli spy network comprising a member involved in the “bombing” of the Ethiopian plane which crashed into Lebanon’s territorial waters on January 25, 2010, a Mauritanian website has reported.
An Arab businessman heads the alleged Mossad network, elhourriya.net said.
A preliminary report on the Ethiopian plane which crashed off the Lebanese coast killing 90 people on board, including more than 50 Lebanese nationals, blamed “a series of errors on the part of the pilots who failed to take into account the signals emitted by the plane's instruments," a source close to the probe told Agence France Presse.
The Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737-800 went down minutes after taking off from Beirut in bad weather on January 25, killing 83 passengers and seven crew. Lebanese officials have previously said that data recovered from the plane's black box showed all instruments were working well until it plunged into the Mediterranean in a fierce storm.
The Israeli espionage network was allegedly busted after the arrest of Fares al-Banna, a Jordanian man of Palestinian origin, on charges of theft. Authorities found in his house a hand-written draft of a letter addressed to the Emirati embassy in Mauritania, the website claimed.
“I am Fares al-Banna, a Jordanian national who works for Israel’s Mossad. I took part in the operations of murdering (Hamas military commander Mahmoud) al-Mabhouh in Dubai and the bombing of the Ethiopian plane in Lebanon, which had a Hizbullah target on board,” Banna says in the alleged letter.
He asked the Mauritanian authorities not to hand him over to the Jordanian intelligence in return for giving important information about the cases of Mabhouh and the Ethiopian plane, and the Arab Mossad network in Mauritania, elhourriya.net added.
A Mauritanian journalist, who passed on the letter to the website, said he had earlier passed it on to Mauritania’s State Security Department, which launched a probe into the case. He also said he gave a copy to the Saudi ambassador in Mauritania, who showed interest in the case.
The journalist also met with the Emirati ambassador, who seemed to be indifferent to the information he heard, the website added.
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