Posted on 12/13/2004 4:47:03 PM PST by ddtorque
Azzam Azzam, the Israeli Druze citizen who was freed at the beginning of the week from an Egyptian prison following the intervention of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, expressed his gratitude to Israel and Sharon upon his release.
"Mr. Prime Minister, thank you very much, I love you very much and I don't know how to express this. This is only thanks to you. I don't have the words to thank you for your determination. I told my brothers that if I'm not released while Arik Sharon is Prime Minister, I would never be released. I am fortunate and proud to have been born in Israel," Azzam told Sharon on the telephone before he boarded a plane to take him home.
...
"Thank you for bringing me home and granting me a new life," Azzam said to IDF Brigadier General Yoav Galant, military secretary to the prime minister, after crossing the border from Egypt back into Israel.
Azzam, 41, of the Druze village of Maghar in the Galilee, was arrested by Egypt in November 1996 on suspicion of spying for Israel. An engineer at a textile plant in Cairo, he was accused of passing on Egyptian state secrets by soaking women's underwear in invisible ink. An Egyptian state security court sentenced him to 15 years in prison for espionage and damaging Egyptian state security.
The Druze are an Arab-speaking minority within an Arab minority in Israel, a community loyal to the state that has suffered hundreds of casualties in its defense, and whose men serve today in high-ranking and sensitive positions within the Israeli military and security forces. The Druze in Israel comprise approximately 85,000 people, about 1.8 percent of the total Israeli population and about 10 percent of the country's minority population.
(Excerpt) Read more at israel21c.org ...
Good news ping!
Uh, okay. Sounds like typical Egyptian "justice" to me. Glad he's out though.
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