A former Israeli government minister accused of spying for Iran is expected to be sentenced to 11 years in prison, after he agreed to a plea bargain deal with prosecutors Wednesday.
Former Minister Gonen Segev agreed to plead guilty to espionage charges and a charge of transferring information to an enemy power. In exchange, prosecutors will drop charges of aiding an enemy of the state. Segev will be sentenced to 11 years in prison as part of the plea bargain.
Segev, who won a seat in the 13th Knesset on the center-right Tzomet party’s list, served as Energy and Infrastructure Minister from 1995 to 1996. In 1994, Segev and several other Tzomet MKs broke away from the party, forming the Yiud faction, which joined the Labor government of Yitzhak Rabin.
In June, Israel’s Shin Bet internal security agency revealed that Segev had been arrested a month earlier on suspicion of committing the offenses of assisting the enemy in a time of war and of spying against the State of Israel.
Israeli investigators said they had found evidence that Segev had been recruited by the Iranian regime, and that Segev had acted as an agent on behalf of Iranian intelligence.
It was further alleged that in 2012, Segev had opened a channel to Iranian intelligence services via the country’s embassy in Nigeria. He later came twice to meetings with his operators in Iran.
Segev is staid to have met with his Iranian operators around the world, in hotels and apartments which are believed to be used by Iranian intelligence services. Segev also received a secret communications system to encrypt the messages between him and his operators.
Segev was previously convicted of attempted credit card fraud, and pleaded guilty to drug smuggling