Updated
Israeli officials have announced the country's parliament will conduct what it calls an "intensive" inquiry into the Prisoner X case.
Last week, the ABC's Foreign Correspondent program revealed that Ben Zygier was found hanged in a secret prison cell near Tel Aviv in 2010.
The Australian-Israeli citizen was thought to be an agent for Israel's Mossad spy agency, and Israel went to extreme lengths to cover up the death.
It imposed a total media blackout on the case but was forced to ease the restrictions after the story made headlines across the world, rendering the local gag order ineffective.
Australia's Foreign Minister Bob Carr has ordered his own department to prepare a report into the case and has also asked Israel to explain the circumstances surrounding the detainment and death.
Israel now says it will hold an "intensive" inquiry.
"The intelligence subcommittee of the [Knesset] foreign affairs and defence committee decided to hold an intensive inquiry into all aspects of the affair of the prisoner found dead in his cell," the committee spokesman Asaf Doron said.
He gave no further details.
Read Trevor Bormann's original story here
Watch the full Foreign Correspondent report on Prisoner X on iView
How Israel's top spies scrambled to keep the lid on the ABC's revelations
In his first comment on the affair, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that shining too much light on intelligence activities could "badly damage" state security.
"Overexposure of security and intelligence activities can damage, and damage badly, state security and that is why in every debate we must not underestimate the security interest," he said in remarks to the cabinet communicated by his office.
"In the reality in which Israel lives, it must be a central interest," he said in a thinly veiled criticism of media speculation as to what might have been Zygier's precise intelligence role and the nature of his alleged offence.
Mr Netanyahu spoke shortly after Mr Carr's office said it was seeking answers.
"I ask everyone: let the security forces continue to work quietly in order that we can carry on living in peace and security in Israel," Mr Netanyahu said.
"We need to ensure that we protect the normal working of our security branches," he added, expressing "complete trust" in Israel's security forces and legal system.
Mr Carr said his office was preparing a report looking at all communications between Australia and Israel, including between its security agencies.
"We have asked the Israeli government for a contribution to that report," Mr Carr said yesterday.
"We want to give them an opportunity to submit to us an explanation of how this tragic death came about."
Over the weekend, a senior Israeli official said Australia's intelligence community was "deeply involved" in the case and had even interrogated Zygier on suspicion he was spying for the Jewish state.
Israeli daily Haaretz reported remarks by unnamed former acquaintances of Zygier who said that he told them stories which seemed incompatible with a genuine secret agent.
The paper's defence analyst, Amir Oren, wrote that Zygier bragged to one friend, a former special forces soldier, of his Mossad connections and confided to another that during his military service that he had provided back-up to Israeli agents operating in Lebanon, in the course of which he had killed local children.
"Ben left the army and told me that he had been compelled to kill a boy and girl while providing security for an operation in Lebanon," Mr Oren quoted the friend as saying.
"He told me he was hospitalised for a month with trauma. Afterward he went back to Australia and several years later returned to Israel."
"It astounds me if that could really happen," the friend added.
"If so, how did they recruit him into the Mossad?"
Israel's justice ministry is reportedly mulling whether to allow publication of the inquest into Zygier's death, which returned a verdict of suicide.
According to Maariv newspaper, parts of the inquest are likely to be published in the coming week after attorney-general Yehuda Weinstein decides what to delete for security reasons.
Senior legal officials are also debating whether charges of negligence should be levelled over Zygier's death.
Zygier, who immigrated to Israel in around 2001, is understood to have been arrested in February 2010 on charges which remain subject to a tight gag order.
Ten months later, he was found hanged in his cell despite the fact that it was under 24-hour surveillance, sparking a welter of criticism and conspiracy theories in both Israel and Australia.
ABC/AFP
Topics: law-crime-and-justice, prisons-and-punishment, foreign-affairs, world-politics, israel, australia
First posted
Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-18/israel-to-conduct-27intensive27-prisoner-x-probe/4524190
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