JERUSALEM: A US-Israeli citizen being held in Egypt on espionage charges is not a spy, Israel’s foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israeli military radio on Tuesday.
"I can say categorically that this student, who may have behaved bizarrely and irresponsibly, has no ties with Israeli, American or even lunar intelligence services," Lieberman said.
"This is a mistake or bizarre behavior on the part of the Egyptian authorities, who have received full explanations from us," he added.
"They understand that it would be good to put an end to this issue as quickly as possible… I hope that everything will be over in the coming days and that will be achieved by a deportation."
American-born Ilan Grapel was arrested on Sunday in a Cairo hotel and placed in preventative detention for 15 days, according to Egyptian media.
He has reportedly been accused of being an agent with Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency and of sowing sectarian strife and chaos in Egypt after a popular uprising forced president Hosni Mubarak to step down on February 11.
Egyptian authorities said on Sunday that Grapel had been "posing as a foreign correspondent," and that his movements and phone calls had been monitored before his arrest.
Grapel’s father also said that his son was a student who volunteered for a US refugee agency and described Egypt’s allegations as "totally delusional."
"This whole story is totally delusional as far as I am concerned … Any connection to working with the Mossad [the Israeli spy agency] is [wrong]," Daniel Grapel, Ilan’s father told Israeli Channel 2 in an interview in Hebrew from his home in New York.
"He is volunteering as part of his studies and he gets [academic] credits for summer work … He had to stay in Egypt for three months as part of the American agency that is connected with transferring refugees from Egypt," he said.
Grapel’s mother, Irene, said her son had worked for Saint Andrew’s Refugee Services, a non-governmental organization, in Cairo, adding that he holds US and Israeli citizenship.
Several pictures of Grapel were released showing him in Israeli army uniform posing with other soldiers, and shaking hands with worshippers at a mosque in Cairo.
Another picture shows Grapel standing in Tahrir Square – the symbolic heart of protests that brought down Mubarak – wearing sunglasses and holding a large sign that read: "Oh stupid Obama, it is a pride revolution not a food revolution."
Another front-page photo on the state-owned daily Al-Ahram and shown repeatedly on state TV shows Grapel holding a microphone in a mosque, apparently "preaching."
Consular visit
On Monday, the US embassy in Cairo confirmed that "Ilan Chaim Grapel, age 27, is a US citizen and was detained on June 12, 2011 by Egyptian authorities."
"A consular officer visited Mr Grapel on June 13 and confirmed that he was in good health," embassy spokeswoman Elizabeth Colton told AFP.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Mark Toner declined to comment on the merits of the case.
"Right now, our function … is to provide him with consular services (and) work with local authorities to make sure he’s being treated fairly under local law," Toner said.
Ex-Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, a former pointman in Israel’s relations with Egypt, told Israel Radio he hoped the arrest was not an attempt to "put peace into total freeze." Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 which ordinary Israelis refer to as "the cold peace.”
Last year, Egypt – which signed a 1979 peace treaty with Israel – said the confessions of an Egyptian accused of spying for Israel had led to three espionage cells being dismantled in Lebanon and Syria.
Friends and Family
Friends and relatives of Grapel have said he is a law student in Atlanta with an avid interest in the Mideast — and not a Mossad agent out to sabotage Egypt’s revolution, as Egyptian authorities claim.
Grapel appears to have been traveling under his real name, made no secret of his Israeli links. His connections to Israel, including his past military service, are easy to find on the Internet.
"I don’t think a Mossad agent would post things on Facebook, travel under his own name and get a grant from law school to travel," said Rebecca Peskin, a classmate at Emory University in Atlanta, dismissing the Egyptian allegations. "This is a big misunderstanding."
Will Felder, another Emory classmate, described Grapel as a classmate who was born in New York City, then moved to Israel, where his grandparents live, as a young man.
Felder denied the Egyptian claim that Grapel was in Egypt between January and May. "He was regularly in classes," he told the AP by email. "The only length of time we were not in school together would have been spring break, and he was in (New York) with his family."
Grapel graduated from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, in 2005 with a bachelor’s degree in international studies, school officials said. He planned to return to Emory for his third and final year of law studies, Felder said.
He described Grapel as "very liberal, very open-minded" and "pro-conciliation." He said he was not affiliated with any political groups.
