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| Middle East |
| Shin Bet Releases Irishman After Standing by "IRA" Arrest |
| 2003-07-17 |
| The confusion over the arrest of an Irish language expert near Ramallah on Saturday deepened Wednesday as both the Israeli Shin Bet security service and British MI5 intelligence agency both insisted separately that they had found the right man, before Israel released him without charge late in the afternoon. British media reports following the arrest claimed that John Morgan, known also as Sean O’Muireagain, was mistaken for a notorious IRA bombmaker with the same name. Family and friends were quick to tell the British media that the pro-Palestinian activist from Belfast went to the territories to set up a cultural exchange program and had no terrorist connections. They called for his immediate release. But Israeli security officials stood by the arrest Tuesday, noting that it was the foreign media and not they who had given Morgan the bombmaker label. "There are two John Morgan’s, both are linked to the IRA, one ideologically and the other actively. We arrested the person we were looking for and are checking his motives and his reasons for staying in the West Bank," an official told the Jerusalem Post. "Either way, he’s outta here!" British intelligence sources are also insisting there is no mistake over the information they passed to Israel about Morgan, information that apparently linked his travel to Israel with instructing Palestinian terror groups in bomb-making techniques, according to a report in The Guardian Wednesday. Morgan’s arrest created headlines worldwide after an article in The Guardian’s sister newspaper The Observer on Sunday claimed Israel had launched a manhunt for Morgan, who was in the region to assist Palestinian terror groups improve their bomb-making capabilities. The newspaper report claimed that the British intelligence had tipped off their Israeli counterparts. According to another British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, however, there is a long and dishonorable Irish republican tradition of hostility to Jewish national aspirations, which could explain Morgan’s presence in Ramallah in either case. In an article published Wednesday the Telegraph details ties between the IRA and Nazi Germany during the Second World War, including the death of the IRA chief of staff on a German submarine and his subsequent burial at sea wrapped in the swastika. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. |
| Posted by:Steve |