Belgium's Standing Intelligence Agencies Review Committee will, in a report due to be released later Tuesday, reveal details of a 2003 EU bugging scandal that names the Israeli secret services as a potential culprit, a Brussels-based website focusing on EU affairs reported today. Committee member Peter de Smet told 'EU observer' website that the report says that two people suspected of planting listening devices in the EU headquarters in Brussels , the Justus Lipsius building, when it was constructed mid-1990s had been trained by the Israeli telecommunications company Comverse, which has known links to the Mossad, the Israeli spy agency.
The report does not name any country other than Israel as the potential guilty party in its findings, said the EU observer. "There is no hard evidence, " De Smet n however, admitted. "But it was really state-of-the-art listening equipment that was placed back in 1993 or 1994 and there were not many countries that had the means at this time." It could be Israel, it could be Russia, it could be England or it could be the US - there you have really the four countries possible, but it will never blow up who did these things. It will remain a game inside the intelligence services," he added.
In a point of caution for the EU's new diplomatic service, European External Action Service, which is currently installing security facilities in its new headquarters in Brussels, De Smet noted that the "main lesson of the report is that you should be careful when choosing your subcontractors." The spy devices were first discovered by the Justus Lipsius' own technicians in February and March 2003 in parts of the building used by British, French, German and Spanish diplomats.
No comments:
Post a Comment