Australian authorities were investigating Ben Zygier for espionage months before his arrest in Israel

The Australian Age newspaper reported Wednesday that Ben Zygier, the alleged Mossad agent who committed suicide in Ayalon Prison in December 2010, was under investigation by Australian intelligence months before he was arrested in Israel.

Zygier was being investigated for fraudulent use of his Australian passport for espionage purposes. An Australian reporter even contacted Zygier in Israel in early 2010 and spoke with him over the phone. Zygier at the time denied he had worked for the Mossad.

The paper contacted Zygier as part of a report on an investigation being carried out by the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) into three Jewish Australian citizens who had emigrated to Israel, and whose passports were suspected of being used for espionage.

In each of the three cases, the passport-holders had returned to Australia to change their names to less-Jewish sounding ones. Zeiger changed his name three times, first to Ben Alon, then Ben Allen and then Ben Burrows. What raised the authorities' suspicion even further was the fact that the passports had been used for travel in Iran, Syria and Lebanon.

The paper also received information that Zygier had returned to Australia in 2009 to earn an MBA at Monash University, and there were reports that he had been in contact with Iranian and Saudi students. According to the Age, the ASIO investigation began in mid-2009, long before Zygier was arrested in Israel and before the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January 2010.

Dubai police claimed that a group of Mossad agents were at the hotel where al-Mabhouh was assassinated, and at least three of them were using Australian passports. Israel had to give explanations following the incident to the Australian government and promise to stop using its passports.

Earlier on Wednesday, Australian media reported that Australian intelligence services were updated by the Israeli government on the arrest of Ben Zygier in 2010, reported on Wednesday.

ABC network, which first reported on the affair, quoted Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr's spokesman, who said that in the past couple days Carr has received new information indicating that officials at the Foreign Ministry and another Australian government agency knew about Zygier's arrest.