It turns out that a second inmate was being held at Ayalon Prison at the same time as Ben Zygier, now known as Prisoner X, when he committed suicide in 2010, the Jerusalem Post reports. It is unclear, however, whether the anonymous prisoner still resides at Ayalon. According to Zygier’s lawyer, Avigdor Feldman, the second inmate, who is being called Prisoner X2, committed crimes far graver than Zygier’s.
Feldman said that the second undisclosed prisoner was being held for offenses that were much more “sensationalist and incredible” than those allegations that Ben Zygier was facing.
While Zygier was imprisoned while on trial, Prisoner X2 was actually convicted, Haaretz reports. Feldman said he was “shocked” upon hearing the second prisoner’s story. He laid out some of the facts and similarities between the two cases:
“One: they’re both Israelis. Two: They worked for a security agency of the highest level of secrecy. Three — and this is important — their activity points to a security failure that allowed the crime to be committed, secrets to be kept, or other deeds to be done,” Feldman said on “Boker Tov Yisrael” (Good morning Israel).
According to Reuters, the information about Prisoner X2 emerged in a report published Monday.
The Justice Ministry on Monday published a previously redacted report on Zygier’s suicide, which included mention of the second, unidentified, detainee, held in another wing of the same prison. The ministry provided no further information.
In February, Tablet’s Elissa Goldstein wrote about Zygier, who was from her close-knit hometown of Melbourne:
I was up late last night trawling the Internet for fresh news on the case of Prisoner X. Mostly I read the same information again and again, recycled by different media outlets and news agencies, and I found myself seriously pondering for the first time the phrase “X marks the spot.” As a symbol it seeks to nullify and eliminate, but it also draws attention to itself; to what lies beneath the surface. It’s an apt metaphor for not just the disappearance of Ben Zygier, but for his community’s response to his disappearance: seeing but not seeing, speaking but not speaking.
Just like Zygier’s, Prisoner X2’s story is, for now, still shrouded in mystery.
Related: Prisoner X Was From My Shtetl
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Romy Zipken is a writer and editor at Jewcy. Her Twitter feed is @RomyZipken.
