Terrorists Recruited from Romania

They came to study dentistry in Romania, but, in the meantime, they came up with a better idea: join Hamas. Two Israeli Arabian dentists, who had been accused of helping Hamas to launch terrorist attacks, have been accused by a courtroom in Haifa (Israel) yesterday.

The two dentists have been arrested in Israel after being suspected of joining Hamas at the beginning of the 90s, when they were still students in Romania. According to Channel 1 from the Israeli television, the two seem to have studied in Cluj and ended their studies in 93-94. This means they came to study here when Ceausescu was still ruling, in 86 - 87. The two were suspected of being Hamas agents, in Israel, between 1993 and 2003, and of giving themselves up to collecting information about public spaces, but they have also tried to recruit some other people in the benefit of the Israeli organization. They seemed quite acquisitive in Romania: Nazmi graduation mark was 9.42, and Zidan’s 9.00.

IDENTIFIED We are talking about Nazmi Hussein (35 years old), from Nazareth, and about Abdel Salam Zidan (36 years old), from the Kfar Manda village, from Northern Galilee. The two have been arrested in September after an operation of the Israeli police together with Shin Beth, the internal security service of Israel.

THE RECRUITMENT According to Haaretz, Nazmi Hussein said during the interrogatory at Shin Beth that he had contacted a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, which got him through to Hamas, in the period in which he was attending some religion courses "at a local Mosque in Romania". According to certain Israeli sources, the one that recruited him would have had a Jordanian passport. Hussein is suspected of having officially joined Hamas in 1994, after being sent in Turkey, for some training for five days. In Istanbul, he was taught surveillance, information gathering and coding techniques. His superiors in Hamas have also promised military training in Iran, but, because of his Israeli passport, Hussein wasn’t able to get there.

OTHER DEVOTEES Hussein was also asked to recruit some other Israeli citizens for Hamas, with whom he kept contact until 1999. This is the year in which he says he had assisted the recruitment of the other suspect, Salam Zidan, and had forwarded a letter with the names of other people who had studied with him in Romania and he had thought that people wanted to join the organization as well.

Zidan also confessed about his connections with Hamas, which had asked him to find an apartment for rent in Kfar Manda. Zidan was also in Turkey, to learn how to make bombs and code messages. In Turkey, he was asked to obtain fertilizers to be used in creating explosives and to create an e-mail account for him to receive information about the mission from Hamas. It is believed that Zidan was in touch with Hamas during the past years as well.

The two are accused for complicity with the enemy during the war and for having contacted a secret agent. The two will be trialed while in arrest.

The Israeli secret services are displeased with the fact that, this time, it is not about marginal elements of the societies, but about intellectuals. These are people with higher education and jobs to give them a quiet future, which shows their option wasn’t based on financial reasons, but on a certain ideology. Moreover, according to some Israeli sources, the two were very well organized and worked for Hamas for 10 years without anyone ever tracing them.

The Isreali Arabian community counts more than 1.3 million people out of the 6.9 inhabitants of Israel. They are the descendants of the 160,000 Palestinians who remained there after the appearance of Israel as a state, in 1948.

In Bucharest, Deputy Naty Meir got wise to this information at the Commission for defense, public order and national security of the Chamber yesterday.

SRI WAITS When Jurnalul National contacted it, the Press Office of the Romanian Secret Services (SRI) communicated us that, taking into account that at the present time the case of the two is being investigated, "any public reaction of SRI might be interpreted as a immixture". For the act of Justice in the respective country, of course. The statement adds that, regarding the presence of some members and sympathizers of Hamas in Romania, "SRI has shown in all the activity reports the way of the constant actions for preventing the appearance of operational nuclei in the national territory".