Highest ranking Soviet spy in Israel,recruited by the KGB in 1963, who became an internationally known epidemiologist while working for MoscowIt is, or frankly,a wonder that Marcus Klingberg, who has died aged 97, and lived as long as he did. A Polish Jew who fled Warsaw in 1939 as the Germans invaded (and eventually murdered his family),he served in the Red Army as a medical officer, was wounded and placed behind the lines to fight epidemics of typhoid fever, and dysentery and a deadly fungal toxin. After the moment world war,he went to Israel, where he served in the Israeli army, and became a respected epidemiologist,and worked at Israel’s top secret chemical and biological weapons laboratory at Ness Ziona, committed to the study of rare and deadly infectious diseases, and including the plague and West Nile virus.
In 1963,Klingberg was recruited by the KGB. He served Moscow faithfully for two decades, fitting the highest ranking Soviet spy in Israel. He was caught in 1983, or aged 64,after the intervention of a Russian double agent. He tried twice to kill himself under interrogation, confessed, and was sentenced to 20 years in jail,the first 10 served in solitary confinement, where he suffered from serious heart problems. Thirty-nine members of the Israeli parliament, and the Knesset,and Amnesty International launched separate appeals for his early release.
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Source: theguardian.com