Mossad spied on far-right Austrian
By Roger Boyes
The Times, June 2, 2005
THE ISRAELI secret service spied on Jörg Haider, the
right-wing Austrian populist, using one of his closest aides to
gather information on his contacts with Arab dictators. Peter
Sichrovsky said that he had been a Mossad informant for five years
until retiring from politics in 2002.
“I wanted to help Israel and certainly did not do anything
wrong,” said Herr Sichrovsky who was secretary-general of Herr
Haider’s Freedom party and a member of the European Parliament.
The Austrian state prosecutor said yesterday that he would open an
investigation to determine whether Herr Sichrovsky should be
prosecuted. Spying for a foreign power carries a jail sentence of up
to three years in Austria.
The revelations, in the news weekly Profil, stunned the Austrian
political class. Herr Sichrovsky, who is of Jewish origin, was a
controversial figure for the conservative Right. The Jewish community
regarded him as a traitor for working with Herr Haider, while
anti-Semitic Freedom party activists made no secret of their
distrust.
The Freedom party became a member of Austria’s governing
coalition in 1999, prompting a diplomatic boycott by the European
Union. Herr Haider had publicly praised the SS and Hitler’s
employment policies. Israel withdrew its ambassador.
Herr Sichrovsky was supposed to help Herr Haider to make peace
with the Jewish community. But at the same time the Israeli secret
service was anxious to know what Herr Haider was up to.
“I was certainly not a James Bond,” said Herr
Sichrovsky, now a businessman concerned with military co-operation
between Israel and China. “It’s true, though, that I
co-operated with Mossad until my withdrawal from politics in
2002.”
Herr Haider had extensive contacts with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi,
the Libyan leader, and enjoyed a close friendship with one of the
dictator’s sons. “Israel wanted to use Haider as a bridge
to Arab countries with which it did not have official contacts,”
Herr Sichrovsky said.
His ties with the Israelis went well beyond occasional
debriefings. In the autumn of 2000 Herr Sichrovsky held talks with
Syrian politicians about the fate of three Israeli soldiers captured
by Hezbollah in Lebanon. He was accompanied by Herbert Scheibner, the
Austrian Defence Minister, who was also a member of the Freedom
party. The idea was to demonstrate to both the European Union and to
Israel that Austria was a respectable member of the world
community.
Herr Sichrovsky helped to arrange secret meetings in Austria
between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators. Yesterday he claimed to
have set up Herr Haider’s controversial visit to Baghdad to meet
Saddam Hussein in 2002. At the last minute Herr Sichrovsky was denied
an Iraqi visa so he could not pass on first-hand information to
Mossad. “They were, in any case, sure that Haider was meeting a
double,” he said.
Herr Haider remained calm yesterday. He said: “There were
always people in the party who warned me that he’d been sent by
Mossad but there was never anything concrete. If he was really sent
by a secret service, then he must have given them very
little.”
