Authorities said Tuesday they have detained an Egyptian engineer from the country's nuclear energy agency for spying for Israel. State security prosecutor Hisham Badawi declared that two foreigners, one Japanese and one Irish, were wanted in connection with the case but remained at large.
According to the AP, he identified the Egyptian engineer as Mohammed Sayed Saber and said he was detained Feb. 18. He conveyed Saber, 35, stole "important documents" from the Atomic Energy Agency and passed it on to agents of Israel's Mossad intelligence service in return for $17,000. Saber first met the two foreigners in Hong Kong between 2004 and 2006, Badawi disclosed.
Israel's Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mark Regev dismissed the news. "We've heard about this from the media. These sort of charges unfortunately appear all too often in the Egyptian media and they always prove to be baseless," he said.
