Zygier, who committed suicide in 2010 after 10 months in a maximum security windowless cell, was reportedly arrested for accidentally compromising an Israeli intelligence operation that was attempting to recover the remains of three soldiers.
The ABC report said his demise was linked to him naming Lebanese double agent, Ziad al-Homsi, who admitted to the network he had been approached about the whereabouts of Israeli tank crewmen in Lebanon in 1982.
Israeli agents are said to have contacted al-Hamsi in an effort to recover their bodies.
“After one year of meeting with them, at the last meeting they informed me about the location of the corpses, exactly … I had to find a way to bring the bodies and keep them,” al-Hamsi told the ABC.
Al-Hamsi says he was named as an informer for Mossad and incarcerated in Lebanon.
The ABC claims former lawyer Zygier was keen to impress his Israeli spy bosses when he made an unauthorised bid to recruit a Lebanese Hezbollah operative as a double agent – naming al-Hamsi was his proof of validity.
His effort failed and the repatriation operation was subverted.
Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Bob Carr has requested information about the lead-up to dual-citizen Zygier’s death, but is still waiting.
A doctor who had made contact with Zygier weeks before his death spoke to the ABC on condition of anonymity: “It was obvious that he needed to be in therapy with someone from the organisation where he had worked. Someone who would say to him, you made a mistake, but everything will be ok.”
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