Suspicions N.Z. quake victim was Israeli spy: report

[1]

New Zealand intelligence services were investigating whether an Israeli victim of the Christchurch earthquake was a Mossad spy after five passports were found on his body, reports said Wednesday.

The Southland Times said the country's Security Intelligence Service (SIS) also suspected that Israeli rescuers who travelled to New Zealand to help emergency crews after the disaster attempted to hack into a police database.

The newspaper, part of the Fairfax media group, said Ofer Mizrahi, one of three Israelis who died in the February 22 earthquake that killed 181 people, was suspected of being a spy.

It said suspicions were aroused when five passports of different nationalities were found on the 23-year-old's body after he was crushed to death by a falling concrete pillar in the 6.3-magnitude quake.

The newspaper said the SIS also conducted an urgent audit of the police force's national computer system because of fears Israeli forensic specialists who were helping identify victims' bodies had hacked into the database.

"If it had been done, it would eventually have given the Israelis access to all our intelligence," it quoted an unnamed SIS officer as saying.

Prime Minister John Key, who is on a state visit to the United States, refused to discuss the allegations in detail but said the police database had not been compromised.

"I've had no advice or reason to believe that the police intelligence systems have been intercepted or there's been any untoward behaviour with regards to the police systems," he told reporters.

Asked if there was any evidence of Mossad operating in Christchurch at the time of the earthquake, he replied: "I'm not in a position to comment and I'm not going to because I don't believe it's in the national interest to do so."

Mossad's operations remain a sensitive issue in New Zealand after a 2004 incident in which suspected Israeli agents attempted to obtain a passport in the name of a New Zealander who suffered from cerebral palsy.

Two Israelis were jailed for six months over the incident and Wellington suspended diplomatic relations with Israel for more than a year.

Reports in New Zealand said the country's passports were attractive to Mossad for international travel because, unlike Israeli passports, they did not trigger in-depth background checks at border checkpoints.