Update on this story:
'Third man' in passport case an Israeli diplomat
23 July 2004
By NICK VENTER
The "third man" in the Israeli passport fraud case has been identified as an Israeli diplomat, providing the most damning proof yet that two men jailed in Auckland last week are Israeli agents.
The Austrian Foreign Ministry confirmed to TVNZ yesterday that Zev William Barkan, still sought by police in connection with the affair, served as an attache at the Israeli embassy in Vienna from 1996 till 2001.
A spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister Phil Goff said Barkan had also served at the Israeli embassy in Brussels.
It was Barkan, 37, who applied for a passport in the name of a wheelchair-bound cerebral palsy sufferer. Eli Cara and Uriel Kelman, the two men sentenced to six months' jail for passport fraud, were arrested when they tried to take delivery of the false passport in March.
Police broadcast Barkan's photograph on Police Ten 7 two days after their arrests but he is believed to have left New Zealand. Mr Goff declined to say more last night because Cara and Kelman have appealed against their convictions.
Barkan's identification as an Israeli diplomat explains Prime Minister Helen Clark's certainty that Cara and Kelman are Israeli intelligence agents.
AdvertisementAdvertisementHis public unmasking is further embarrassment for the Israeli Government, which has refused to explain its actions and refused to apologise.
In another development yesterday, reports surfaced that a senior representative of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency made an unpublicised visit to New Zealand soon after the arrests of Cara and Kelman.
The agent met the Security Intelligence Service and police, but enforcement officers do not know whether the attempt to obtain a false passport was a one-off incident or the latest in a series. Cara made 24 trips to New Zealand from his Sydney home before his arrest.
Israel's Canberra-based ambassador to New Zealand, Orna Sagiv, said last night that she did not know whether Barkan had worked as an Israeli diplomat nor whether Mossad had visited New Zealand.
Miss Clark declined to comment.
