The Jerusalem State Attorney's Office filed charges Monday morning against Ahmed Awad, 22, a resident of Beit Tzafafa in Jerusalem, who is accused of contact with a foreign agent.
According to the charge sheet, Awad was recruited to the Cyprus Muslim Brotherhood during years that he spent in Cyprus as a student at the Near East University in Nicosia. In the course of his activity in the organization, he met a Hamas activist named Asham Hamed, who informed him that he would be transferred to the Jerusalem Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that is outlawed in Israel. The Muslim Brotherhood also informed Awad that it would pay 50 percent of his study fees and living expenses.
Hamed asked Awad to to collect intelligence on various sites of interest in Jerusalem and in other locations in Israel. He was told to take part in a short “security course,” after which he was given a pseudonym and returned to Israel.
The four-day course included classes on techniques for secret communication, including the use of computer programs that make it hard to detect one's e-mail address. Other subjects were how to stand up to Israeli interrogation methods, how to identify attempts by Israeli intelligence to recruit agents, and how to collect intelligence for a planned terror operation.