Posted on 06/28/2007 5:53:49 AM PDT by RDTF
An Egyptian billionaire financier who feared for his life after being accused of being a Mossad spy was found dead outside his Mayfair flat yesterday in suspicious circumstances.
Ashraf Marwan, the son-in-law of the late President Gamel Abdel Nasser, was found beneath his fourth-floor flat in Carlton House Terrace.
Police were treating his death as suspicious. Friends of Mr Marwan, a former shareholder in Chelsea Football Club, said that he had feared assassination after being named three years ago as an agent during the Yom Kippur war.
Rumours of his death circulated in London’s Arab community last night. Some believe that he may have taken his life after a serious illness was diagnosed.
Mr Marwan’s death will send shockwaves across the Middle East and among some of Britain’s wealthiest people. His associates included Adnan Khashoggi, the arms dealer, Ken Bates, the football club chairman, the Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and the late Tiny Rowland.
If found to be murder, his death will carry echoes of last year’s assassination of Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB agent.
Mr Marwan, 63, was identified as an agent by the Vanity Fairwriter Harold Bloom in his book Eve of Destruction, which detailed his involvement in the Yom Kippur war in 1973. Although Nasser, who humiliated the British Government at Suez, died in 1970, Mr Marwan, his son-in-law, was part of the inner circle of his successor, Anwar Sadat, who started the war.
The identity of the agent, described by a postwar Israeli inquiry commission only as “the source”, had been a closely guarded secret. Evidence pointed towards someone high in the Egyptian Establishment.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
ping
Good morning, Gordon Browne..hope this goes down well with your porridge this morning..
Very interesting. Thanks for posting.
Mission accomplished, Harold Bloom, hope your karma enjoys the burden.
Being accused of working for Mossad in the middle-east is often a fatal condition. Either arabs taking "revenge" or Mossad cutting it's losses.
ya got that right
The ROP at work?
Wasn’t Marwan the “bad guy” Jack Bauer went after on “24” two seasons ago?
Just goes to show that money, even a lot of it, can’t keep you safe.....
Yes. :)
Then we need to crank up the rumor mill and spin that sucker like a top!
I fully agree...
Was his head on or off?
it doesn’t say
RIP, Ashraf.
On is Mossad, off is arabs.
DEBKAfile reports: Scotland Yard to probe mysterious death in London of Yom Kippur War whistleblower
June 28, 2007, 10:57 AM (GMT+02:00)
The body of Dr. Ashraf Marwan, 63, the late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s private secretary, who alerted Israel to the coming 1973 War, was found under the balcony of his luxury apartment in London, Wednesday, June 27. A multimillionaire, arms merchant and longtime Mossad agent, Scotland Yard is treating his death as suspicious.
Dr. Marwan tipped Israel off in advance of Egypt’s surprise attack in Oct. 1973. Intelligence chief Brig. Gen. Eli Zeira Zeira was later accused of ignoring the warning. As a result, Israel was caught unawares and suffered disastrous setbacks in the early stages of the Yom Kippur War, when Egyptian and Syrian armies overran large parts of Sinai and Golan and threatened Israel’s very existence.
Dr. Marwan was also son-in-law of Sadat’s predecessor, Gemal Abdul Nasser. The Israeli chapter of his life began in 1969, when he went into an Israeli embassy in Europe to offer the Mossad his services as an undercover agent. He was accepted after the Israeli intelligence service was convinced he was not a double agent.
His close friends say that, although he long lived in fear of his life, he ended it himself because of a terminal illness..
http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=4358
In 1993, the head of IDF intelligence during the Yom Kippur War, Major General Eli Zeira, identified Marwan as a double-agent who misled Israel about Egyptian intentions in 1973. Zeira was removed from his position due to the failure of the army intelligence corps to accurately foresee the outbreak of the war. Tzvi Zamir, who was chief of the Mossad intelligence agency at the time, accused Zeira of making Marwan’s identity public in an attempt to cover up Zeira’s own failures.
After the Yom Kippur War, Egyptian President Sadat singled out Marwan for his contributions to the war effort. Later, Marwan became the head of government-owned military industrial operations in Egypt. In 1982, Marwan moved to England and proceeded to quickly make his mark as a private businessman.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/122911
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.