CAIRO: Egyptian authorities said on Tuesday they had smashed a spy ring working for Israel which included an Egyptian engineer with Cairo's atomic energy commission, an Irishman and a Japanese national.

The Egyptian had been arrested and had confessed, while the two other suspects, including one named as Shiro Aizo, were being hunted, state prosecutor Abdel Meduid Mahmud told reporters.

He said the Egyptian, Mohammed Sayyed Saber, 35, was accused of supplying information to the Israeli secret service Mossad on “the different activities” of Egypt's atomic energy body. According to the official Mena news agency, Saber helped Israeli intelligence hack into the Egyptian Atomic Agency's computer network between February 2006 and February 2007, in exchange for $17,000 and a laptop.

He provided Israeli intelligence with classified documents pertaining to Egypt's Inshas nuclear research centre, north of Cairo. Saber was reported to have paid frequent visits to the Israeli embassy in Cairo in May 1999 in the hope of getting a scholarship to study nuclear engineering at Tel Aviv University, Mena said.—AFP