NAZARETH, Israel // South Africa deported an Israeli airline
official last week following allegations that Israel’s secret police, the Shin
Bet, had infiltrated Johannesburg international airport in an effort to gather
information on South African citizens, particularly black and Muslim travellers.
The move by the South African government followed an
investigation by local TV showing an undercover reporter being illegally
interrogated by an official with El Al, Israel’s national carrier, in a public
area of Johannesburg’s OR Tambo airport.
The programme also featured testimony from Jonathan Garb, a
former El Al guard, who claimed that the airline company had been a front for
the Shin Bet in South Africa for many years.
Of the footage of the undercover reporter’s questioning, he
commented: “Here is a secret service operating above the law in South Africa. We
pull the wool over everyone’s eyes. We do exactly what we want. The local
authorities do not know what we are doing.”
The Israeli foreign ministry is reported to have sent a team to
South Africa to try to defuse the diplomatic crisis after the government in
Johannesburg threatened to deport all of El Al’s security staff.
Mr Garb’s accusations have been supported by an investigation by
the regulator for South Africa’s private security industries.
They have also been confirmed by human rights groups in Israel,
which report that Israeli security staff are carrying out racial profiling at
many airports around the world, apparently out of sight of local authorities.
Concern in South Africa about the activities of El Al staff has
been growing since August, when South Africa’s leading investigative news show,
Carte Blanche, went undercover to test Mr Garb’s allegations.
A hidden camera captured an El Al official in the departure hall
claiming to be from “airport security” and demanding that the undercover
reporter hand over his passport or ID as part of “airport regulations”. When the
reporter protested that he was not flying but waiting for a friend, El Al’s
security manager, identified as Golan Rice, arrived to interrogate him further.
Mr Rice then warned him that he was in a restricted area and must leave.
Mr Garb commented on the show: “What we are trained is to look
for the immediate threat – the Muslim guy. You can think he is a suicide bomber,
he is collecting information. The crazy thing is that we are profiling people
racially, ethnically and even on religious grounds … This is what we do.”
Mr Garb and two other fired workers have told the South African
media that Shin Bet agents routinely detain Muslim and black passengers, a claim
that has ignited controversy in a society still suffering with the legacy of
decades of apartheid rule.
Suspect individuals, the former workers say, are held in an annex
room, where they are interrogated, often on matters unrelated to airport
security, and can be subjected to strip searches while their luggage is taken
apart. Clandestine searches of their belongings and laptops are also carried out
to identify useful documents and information.
All of this is done in violation of South African law, which
authorises only the police, armed forces or personnel appointed by the transport
minister to carry out searches.
The former staff also accuse El Al of smuggling weapons –
licensed to the local Israeli embassy – into the airport for use by the secret
agents.
Mr Garb went public after he was dismissed over a campaign he led
for better pay and medical benefits for El Al staff.
A South African Jew, he said he was recruited 19 years ago by the
Shin Bet. “We were trained at a secret camp [in Israel] where they train Israeli
special forces and they train you how to use handguns, submachine guns and in
unarmed combat.”
Mr Garb claimed to have profiled 40,000 people for Israel over
the past 20 years, including recently Virginia Tilley, a Middle East expert who
is the chief researcher at South Africa’s Human Sciences Research Council. The
think tank recently published a report accusing Israel of apartheid and
colonialism in the Palestinian territories.
“The decision was she should be checked in the harshest way
because of her connections,” Mr Garb said.
Ms Tilley confirmed that she had been detained at the airport by
El Al staff and separated from her luggage. Mr Garb said that during this period
an agent “photo-copied all [her] documentation and then he forwarded it on to
Israel” – Mr Garb believes for use by the Shin Bet.
Israeli officials have refused to comment on the allegations. A
letter produced by Mr Garb – signed by Roz Bukris, El Al’s general manager in
South Africa – suggests that he was employed by the Shin Bet rather than the
airline. Ms Bukris, according to the programme, refused to confirm or deny the
letter’s validity.
The Israeli Embassy in South Africa declined to discuss evidence
that it, rather than El Al, had licensed guns issued to the airline’s security
managers. Questioned last week by Ynet, Israel’s largest news website, about the
deportation of the airline official, Yossi Levy, an Israeli foreign ministry
spokesman said he could not “comment on security matters”.
A report published in 2007 by two Israeli human rights
organisations, the Nazareth-based Arab Association for Human Rights and the
Centre Against Racism, found that Israeli airline staff used racial profiling at
most major airports around the world, subjecting Arab and Muslim passengers to
discriminatory and degrading treatment in violation both of international law
and the host country’s laws.
“Our research showed that the checks conducted by El Al at
foreign airports had all the hallmarks of Shin Bet interrogations,” said
Mohammed Zeidan, the director of the Human Rights Association. “Usually the
questions were less about the safety of the flight and more aimed at gathering
information on the political activities or sympathies of the passengers.”
The human rights groups approached four international airports –
in New York, Paris, Vienna and Geneva – where passengers said they had been
subjected to discriminatory treatment, to ask under what authority the Israeli
security services were operating. The first two airports refused to respond,
while Vienna and Geneva said it was not possible to oversee El Al’s procedures.
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