(IsraelNN.com) Shomron (Samaria) resident Yaakov Teitel, who is accused of murdering two Palestinian Authority Arabs and bombing several political and religious opponents, was asked in the past by Israel's Shin Bet security service to gather information for it. The connection was revealed Friday by reporter Nachum Barnea, writing for the Hebrew-language daily Yediot Acharonot.

The Shin Bet hoped Teitel would help them by reporting on activity among “right-wing extremists,” Barnea said. To that end, agents met with Teitel several times following a 2000 investigation into his activities.

Teitel's help was sought despite the fact that he was suspected of taking part in the murder of a PA Arab in 1997.

Shin Bet officials admitted Friday that their agents had indeed met with Teitel and asked him for information on Israeli nationalists. The meetings with Teitel failed to yield results, and the agency stopped contacting him, they said.

Teitel, 37, has confessed to murdering two PA Arabs in 1997, when he was in Israel as a tourist from the United States. He then returned to the US, coming back to Israel in 2000 with 'new immigrant' status.

According to investigators, in 2006 Teitel began a campaign of intimidation and armed attacks on political and religious opponents, including members of the homosexual community and their supporters, Christian missionaries, and leftist professor Zeev Sternhell.