Benji X . the spin is in.

The spin is In.  Again . The tale is being twisted to soften the  blow and the blow back. ABC broke the story but is now covering its arse.

This story is part of that effort. The real story  has to be read between the lines of what is being said andwhat is  not said.

The comparison with David Hicks cannot be  thrown away with one line .  Australia was not at war with Afghanistan when Hicks was captured over there.  Australian allies tortured and imprisoned him . The government knew, but kept quite. And it played along with its mates until the public pressure forced John Howard to bring him back . The cases against Hicks collapsed  and  that collapse seemed to prove that  governments don't really protect their citizens  against the interests of their allies.   Allies who increasing use the dark, hidden side of their authority to run the world and control its people.  People who have to learn to fight back against the dark hidden and secret Governance

The Israelis are masters of all the dark arts: assassination (from Munich to Dubai), abduction (from Eichmann onward), torture (of Palestinian prisoners), pre-emptive military strikes (from Iraq to Syria), violent interception of civilians at sea (the Gaza flotilla), and colonising foreign territory (the juiciest parts of Palestine).

To its oeuvre Israel has now been accused of 'forcibly disappearing' Prisoner X, the Australian Jew Ben Zygier, who died alone in an Israeli prison.

The allegation follows our 'good friend' Israel's forgery of Australian passports when its tennis-playing assassins murdered a Hamas financier in a Dubai hotel. Israel has also routinely ignored pleas from Australia to stop building illegal 'settlements' (colonies) on Palestinian land, making peace impossible. Australia has even had to expel Israeli diplomats in recent years.

It seems Ben Zygier was an Australian who moved to Israel, worked for Mossad, was imprisoned for treason, and died there by apparent suicide in 2010.

That is not, however, the end of the legal story for Ben Zygier.

There may be questions whether his conditions of detention, including prolonged solitary confinement and treatment by officials, constituted unlawful inhuman or degrading treatment. We do not know if he was tortured. So far there is no suggestion that his death by hanging was suspicious, or that he was unlawfully killed by Israel. But if it was suicide, he may not have received adequate mental health care or supervision in detention and his human rights to life and health may have been violated.

Because of the secrecy around his alleged crimes, it is unclear whether Zygier's rights in the criminal process were fully respected, including whether he received adequate disclosure of the evidence against him or enjoyed the normal safeguards of a fair trial. While security information can be lawfully protected from public disclosure, a person is always entitled to know and challenge the evidence in a fair, independent process

It is not otherwise a crime under Australian law to simply serve in a foreign intelligence service, where the person is not passing Australian secrets and Australia is not at war with that country. Morally and politically some might expect more of a fellow citizen, if one believes in an absolute duty of loyalty to Australia.

But then again, perhaps not. Australia allows dual citizenship and thus permits Australians' civic loyalties to be split with other countries. That is understandable in a multicultural Australia and a cosmopolitan world. It would be hard for Australia to allow dual citizenship while forbidding the rights which flow from it, including a job as a foreign spook. Many Australians would not be alarmed if Australians were serving in Britain's MI6 or America’s CIA, or with other allies. North Korea might be a different story.

At the same time, it is hard to understand why our foreign recruitment law criminalises Australians who wish to fight for rebel groups battling brutal governments (like the Assad regime in Syria), yet allows Australians to fight for the same vicious governments. The current law is unprincipled, not to mention having gaps that 007 could drive through.

Australia should do its best to get to the truth about Ben Zygier and to hold Israel to account if needed. Israel has repeatedly shown itself to be a poor friend of Australia, yet many fawning Australian politicians continue to soft-pedal on Israel’s human rights abuses, no doubt beguiled by the free propaganda trips to Israel that quite a few have accepted.

To be sure, butter would not melt in the mouth of Australia’s own security services. There is a lot of darkness under the hoods of ASIS and ASIO which most of us are blissfully unaware of. But Australians are entitled to expect Israel to treat Australians decently, and to expect our politicians to strongly demand it.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4518166.html