The case of the two former Arabian Israeli students from the Dentistry Faculty in Cluj, who became members of Hamas, continues to draw the attention of the press in Romania and Israel. This time, the lawyer of one of the defendants comes in front to gether with the father of the other defendant, who denies any connection of them with Hamas.
The two Arabian Israeli dentists, who have been accused of helping Hamas to launch anti-Israeli attacks, have been incriminated by the District Court in Haifa on Monday for "collaboration with the enemy during war". The Israeli daily newspapers, Haaretz and Ynet (the lectronic edition of Yediot Aharonot) have published new details regarding the case of the two dentists yesterday. For Ynet, "the scandal is the last of the examples of connections with the terrorist networks discovered in Romania". The article named "The Romanian Wing of Terror", the author of the article published by Ynet wonders if one of the two suspects was a collaborator for Hamas as well as "informer of the Romanian secret services", by taking over an information leaked by an anonymous source from the newspapers in Bucharest. After a detailed review of the reasons for which Husein Nazmi and abdel salam Zidan have been arrested and incriminated in Israel, the reminded publications add the fact that, although Shin Beth, the internal security services, who took part in their catching, says that the suspects admitted to have connections to Hamas, their families say the contrary.IT WAS, NO, IT WASNâT
Ziad Zidan, father of Salam Zidan, denies the fact that his son had connections to the Palestinian organization, the author of many anti-Israeli terrorist attacks. He and his family are convinced that Salam is innocent, Haaretz states.Citește pe Antena3.ro
JUST ATTEMPTS
"From the talks we had with the security officers, I realized that my son hadnât been recruited and didnât plan any operation against the state. His mistake was that he didnât tell the security forces about the Hamas recruitment attempts", Salam Zidanâs father stated for Haaretz. In his turn, the lawyer of the other suspect, Nazmi Hussein, says that his client would have denied categorically any connection of his with Hamas or any other terrorist organization. Moreover, according to the same lawyer, his client wouldnât have any involvement in politics. According to Shin Beth, the terrorist organizations prefer recruiting Arabian Israelis, because they enjoy the freedom to move on the territory of Israel. Shin Beth adds that these imitate the Iran model, which, in the past years, recruited arabian Israelis for Hesbollah, the pro-Iranian Lebanese Militia.THE ISRAELI PASSPORT PROBLEM
In Romania, the news that Nazmi Hussein and Abdel Salam Zidan have been recruited isnât seen as true either. Hmmad Ghazi, representative of the Arabian-Muslim League in Cluj, stated for Mediafax, that he didnât believe in the sayings of the Israeli security: "There is always something happening in Israel. All the people that come from abroad after their studies are convicted. They are checked and freed. I wonder if this is true", Ghazi stated. He says he didnât know the two because they had Israeli passports and didnât mingle with the rest of the Arabian community in Cluj-Napoca. "They could have been praying in the mosque in the Pasteur street, the only one in town, if they were Muslims, but I didnât meet them", the representative of the Arabian-Muslim community in Cluj stated.OFFICIALLY UNWANTED
SRI ( the Romanian secret services) banished 17 sympathizers of Hamas between 1989 and 2005, an antiterrorist officer stated for Jurnalul National. In the same time, "SRI communicated data and information about approximately 50 people resident in Romania to the Israeli partners. These residents used to work for the Muslim Brothers and Hamas terrorist organizations. "The cooperation between SRI and the Israeli security service have evolved in time and cover all the terrorist-Islamic organizations, and Hamas especially", the source added. He also mentioned that the good cooperation led to the taking of some preventive measures for the Romanian and Israeli national security. According to the SRI officer, "the Hamas activity was and is attentively supervised in order to identify any news appeared in the evolution of the organization in Romania, as well as in the organizing structure". (Razvan Belciuganu)They didnât Go for the Specialization
THE SUSPECTS. Abdel Salam Zidan and Hussein Nazmi will stay in arrest during the trial. |
THEIR TRACES
"Whatâs his name?... You know how it is with these Arabian students, they all seem to have the same name, Abdul Hussein Hasa and so on. At the beginning of the 90s we had 3,000 foreign students at Dentistry. But, if I look at the face, it seems rather familiar. I also remember he used to be a good student. You should go and look in the register in order to see the names of his former Romanian colleagues", the Dean of the Dentistry Faculty, professor Lain Serbanescu, advised us.AND THEY ARE GONE
Mrs. P, from the Deanâs Office, says that when Ceausescu was still the leader of the country, there were 25 students each year at Dentistry, and the rest until 100, were foreigners: a lot of Greeks, a lot of youngsters from the Middle and Near East - Iran, Syria, Iraq, Israel - as well as from Germany and Norway or Africa. "You should know there arenât too many colleagues left. The foreigners went back to their countries and it looks like the Romanian students also left the country", the secretary says. She has also explained that the foreign students werenât allowed to go for the residential course, but only for the specialization, but these two, Nazmi and Zidan, the secretary says, didnât go for the specialization either. "I believe that Zidan came to us as a result of a transfer, but I canât tell you where from", the secretary says.COLLEAGUES
"Nazmi!!! Yes, yes, yes. Yes, we were colleagues. But we didnât talk so much with them, especially if we take into account the fact that the Security was a major factor before 1990. However, he seemed a totally normal person, even one cannot tell peopleâs minds. Is he arrested? Trialled? The poor guyâ¦" Our interviewee says that, last year, the ten-years-after-graduation meeting took place, but Nazmi didnât show up. Only two Israeli colleagues, who are Christian Arabians, came. N. C. remembers that they also had another colleague, whose name would be pronounced Ganaem. "I donât how to spell it, but the guy was very passionate when talking about the cause of the Palestinians. Of course, he was a Palestinian", the dentist says.ACCOMMODATION
He says that the foreign students were accommodated at that time in the 11 and 13 hostels, which were considered to be luxurious, and the Romanian used to go to parties there and this is when they socialized. "Yes, they also used to take us out to a restaurant from time to time. Generally, they had good families. However, we didnât know so many things about them. We used to talk about normal things, school and girls. I have never seen Nazmi in a situation that I thought of as strange and I didnât hear anything like this about him either:, the doctor adds. Another colleague of Nazmiâs, dentist in Dej, also says that the Palestinian was known as a good student, and he was even at the top of the form for the foreigners, because he had good grades. (Elena Stanciu)Translation by Sorin Balan