Four Jerusalem Residents Convicted of Spying for Iran

The Jerusalem District Court convicted four residents of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Tsfat on Wednesday, based on their guilty pleas as part of a plea deal. Mamdouh Khader, Omri Abu Hamida, Mahmoud Khader, and Muhammad Taha were found guilty of security offenses committed while carrying out missions for an individual acting on behalf of Iran.

According to the amended indictment, an Iranian agent contacted another defendant in the case and tasked them, in exchange for payment, with missions aimed at harming state security. These included establishing a terror cell, assassinating a nuclear scientist and their family, acquiring weapons and grenades, and creating fabricated documentation of attacks on a soldier's home and a police car.

Mamdouh Khader and Omri Abu Hamida were convicted of failing to prevent an act of terror. They participated in a trip to the Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, where they were informed it was a mission from an Iranian source. After the group was denied entry, they documented their attempt to enter and sent the videos to the Iranian agent. Abu Hamida later inquired about the filming, and was told the target was a resident the Iranians wished to eliminate. Neither man took action to prevent the act.

Mahmoud Khader and Muhammad Taha were convicted of aiding contact with a foreign agent. Khader assisted in spraying and documenting addresses in Jerusalem, drove another defendant to receive grenades, and helped obtain a fake police license plate for a staged attack on a police vehicle. Taha suggested throwing a stun grenade at an empty house to create fabricated documentation of an attack on a Jewish home. He brought the grenade, asked others to throw it, filmed the act, and sent the video to the defendant in contact with the Iranian agent. In another instance, Taha kept the phone used for communication with the Iranian agent to hinder its tracking.

Sentencing arguments will be heard at a later date. Proceedings against the remaining defendants in the case are ongoing. The prosecution was led by Adv. Beni Libskind of the Jerusalem District Prosecutor's Office.