Pyotr Lyukimson, Israel, exclusively to VK
Earlier this week, Israeli police and Shin Bet allowed the publication of information about the arrest of a Belgian, Alex Manas, who was detained at an airport on September 11 on suspicion of spying for Iran. Talking about the great victory of the Israeli secret service in this case is not necessary - rather, they can be accused of a lack of vigilance. Mister Manas, aka Ali Mantsur, refused to undergo a lie detector test while cooperating with the investigation, according to employees of Shin Bet. This duality of the arrested spy looks strange. However, in this case there are several strange things...
Judging by information authorized for publication, the story of Ali Mantsur is quite banal and repeats in general terms the history of many other intelligence officers, as well as the methods of the various intelligence agencies around the world, including "Mossad" .
Ali Mantsur was born in Iran in 1958 and lived there until 1980, when in search of a better life he decided to move to Turkey. There he started a small business, apparently , the usual small-scale wholesale trade between the two countries, which brought him a relatively low income. A turning point for Ali Mantsur was 1997, when he received the coveted visa, allowing him to live and do business in Belgium. In 2006 he married a native of this country and received Belgian citizenship. Then Mantsur changed his name to "Alex Manas", soas not to demonstrate his Iranian origin. He soon divorced from his first wife (it is possible that the marriage was a complete sham), and in 2007 he reappeared at home.
Here, Ali/Alex married again, this time to a compatriot, and began to live between Belgium, Iran and Turkey. Fluent language proficiency and acquaintance with the markets of these countries allowed him to expand and strengthen his business. The greater the compression ring of economic sanctions against Iran was, the better his deals became.
Being a successful businessman, having a double - Iranian and Belgian – allegiance, attracted the attention of the Iranian secret services. They had long needed a person with visa-free entry to almost any country of the West, including Israel, who was a prominent businessman.
Apparently, the recruitment of Ali Mantsur was initially overseen by Qasem Soleimani - the commander of the Al-Quds Brigade - included in the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) and engaged in carrying out special operations abroad. Among the last such special operations, we can remember the 2012 terrorist attack against the Israeli embassy in New Delhi, the failed attacks in Tbilisi and Bangkok, as well as the terrorist attacks against Israeli targets in Azerbaijan, Kenya and Nigeria, prevented at the planning stage.
It is possible that Soleimani’s people long ago began establishing contacts with Ali Mantsur, but a concrete offer of cooperation followed only in early 2012. Then he was told that Al- Quds was interested in involving him in the extraction of intelligence information about Israel, and that as payment for his services he would get a million dollars, not counting the money that he would get for "incidental expenses".
For several months, Ali Mantsur apparently undertook special training, and the experts 'of Al-Quds created on his "Facebook" and other social media the image of an active Belgian businessman with sufficient funds. The plan developed in the depths of Qassem Soleimani’s department was as follows: Ali Mantsur appears in Israel as a Belgian, Alex Manas, founds in the Jewish state several companies and makes the acquaintance of the widest possible range of Israeli businessmen. His companies, in turn, allow emissaries of Tehran to come to Israel under the guise of their employees; they must collect the necessary information to Iran and carry out the direct planning of the terrorist attacks. These companies were to be kinds of channels to transfer money from Europe to Iran and back, bypassing international sanctions.
At the same time, Ali Mantsur also had to collect information - mainly in the course of communication with the Israelis, as well as taking pictures of various interesting objects in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities. The Iranian secret services were convinced that the Belgian passport of Alex Manas would reliably protect him from over-vigilant inspection by airport security.
And so it happened. The first time Mantsur visited Israel in July 2012, the second time - in January 2013, and both visits went without any incident. The third time, the Iranian with the Belgian passport arrived in Israel on September 6 and ordered a room in one of the most luxurious hotels, from the balcony of which the roof of the complex of the U.S. embassy in Israel, of which he had been asked to take a picture, was perfectly visible. It is possible that the persistence with which the Belgian businessman sought to get accommodation that met certain strict requirements, preferring a balcony overlooking the street and not the sea, alarmed someone on the hotel staff who decided to call the appropriate services.
Although, according to the official version, the decisive role in the arrest of Ali Mantsur was played by an airport security guard, who decided to view the contents of the camera belonging to the Belgian. The abundance of frames depicting almost a bird's-eye view of Tel Aviv's Hayarkon Street in general and the U.S. embassy in particular alerted the staff, and they called a representative of Shin Bet .
And here the Iranian spy case contains some oddities .
The first of these is that Mantsur told the truth quickly and easily gave the investigators the keys to his apartment in Brussels, provided them with the details of his bank account, and at the same time announced the names of those who were directly involved in his recruitment and mentoring. Moreover, some of these names - Haji Mustafa, Haji Hamdi Naamadi , Mahdi Hanbabai – were familiar to the investigators. Mantsur also said that shortly after his return from Israel he had to appear in Tehran for further reports and briefings. However, the Public Advocacy attorney attached to Mantsur, Michal Erkobi, claims that her ward was intimidated and threatened that, if he had not told the truth, he would be denied access to a lawyer.
The second oddity is that you are now reading this story - just three weeks after the arrest of Ali Mantsur. Normally, permission to publish information about an arrest on suspicion of spying can be issued only after the filing of the indictment. While there was an investigation, the Shin Bet security service and the police preferred to keep it a closely guarded secret, so it is not clear what caused the rush. The Iranian media stated that Israel orchestrated the arrest of Ali Mantsur exclusively on the eve of Benjamin Netanyahu's speech at the UN General Assembly in order to inflate the world's anti-Iran campaign. Some observers are of the opinion that in these statements there is truth. In any case, this is suggested by a simple answer made by a police spokesman to attorney Erkobi’s direct question about the lifting of the ban, saying that the decision had been taken over by the YAHBAL (police unit to investigate high-risk and international crime) , and the leadership got them from other, higher levels .
However, most of the materials of the case remain classified, and answering the puzzling question of the lawyer as to what a secret is if the media know everything, the court chose to state that "it is a very complicated case".
At the meeting, where the question of the extension of Ali Mantsur’s arrest was resolved, the lawyer argued that her client is neither anti-Semitic nor a hater of Israel. It is possible that this is so – mostly, the activities of the failed Iranian intelligence officer had a purely economic goal.
