Up until 8PM on Tuesday February 12, 2013 the identity of an inmate held in a notorious cell inside Israel’s Ayalon Prison was known to only a very select group of people. But when Foreign Correspondent went to air, the secret was smashed and the world would know that Prisoner X was a Melbourne man named Ben Zygier – a Mossad agent held on unspecified charges who’d somehow managed to kill himself in what was reportedly a purpose-built, suicide-proof cell.
Our story rocked Israel, shocked Australia and reverberated around the world.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened a special emergency conference of media leaders at which his Mossad chief urged editors and journalists to leave the story alone and continue to observe a strict suppression order on the case. It didn’t work. The story generated a great deal of coverage in Israel and beyond and our understanding of mystery man Zygier has grown in the months since.
But burning questions persist unanswered.
One is particularly red-hot.
What did Ben Zygier do to warrant such extraordinary treatment?
With Prisoner X: The Secret, reporter Trevor Bormann reveals stunning new detail about the activities of Prisoner X and the devastating consequences of those activities. And with that we’ll get a much clearer understanding of why Mossad and the Israeli Government have been so keen to keep the Prisoner X case out of sight.
