CAIRO - Egypt's State Security Prosecutors Sunday have called on the international police (Interpol) to issue arrest warrant against two Israeli officers, whom an Egyptian spy suspect admitted he dealt with.
"The State Security Prosecution approached the Interpol in a memorandum to issue arrest warrants against Idi Moshe and Joseph Demore, Israeli officers with the Mossad, who are set to stand trial in Egypt for spying," a judicial official said.
He added that the arrest warrants would never be issued before the time of the trial, in which the Egyptian suspect would show up.
"It seems both the Israelis will be tried in absentia," the official said.
Earlier this month, the State Security Prosecutor Hisham Badawi had announced the arrest of Tareq Abdel Raziq on charges of spying on behalf of the Israeli secret service Mossad.
The suspect was detained last May. The three suspects are charged with "espionage and endangering the interests of Egypt" by attempting to recruit officials working in the telecommunications sector as well as attempting to recruit spies in Syria and Lebanon.
The judicial official said that the trial of the trio would start on January 15. "They will be tried by the New Cairo State Security Court on mid-January," he said.
Meanwhile, Israeli officials told Israel's daily Yedioth Aharanot Sunday that Israeli Ambassador in Cairo, who left a day after the announcement was made, had nothing to do with the case.
"There is no link between the Israeli's envoy's return and the alleged spy case," one official said, adding that the ambassador was in his home country to attend a diplomatic forum.
The same newspaper also reported that the Israeli National Security Council chairman Uzi Arad was on a visit to Cairo Sunday to prepare for a meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Hosni Mubarak in the Egyptian town of Sharm el-Sheikh on Tuesday.
