London probes death of Egypt's billionaire spy

A coroner's inquest was opened and adjourned in London Friday into the death of the billionaire son-in-law of former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, who reportedly spied for Israel.

Financier Ashraf Marwan, 63, is thought to have fallen from the balcony of his fifth-floor apartment in the West End district of the British capital Wednesday.

According to reports in Cairo, Marwan, who was alleged to have acted as a secret agent for Israel's Mossad intelligence agency during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, either committed suicide or was assassinated.

But opening the inquest into his death Friday, coroner Paul Knapman did not give the cause of death. Scotland Yard only described his death as "unexplained".

Instead, Knapman confined the proceedings -- a legal requirement in England and Wales after a suspicious death -- to identification details.

Marwan's body was identified by one of his sons who lives in the Egyptian capital, the brief hearing was told.

Knapman adjourned proceedings until August 15.

Marwan was the husband of Nasser's eldest daughter, Mona. They have two sons, both businessmen.

London's Metropolitan Police would say only that a man believed to be in his 60s was found dead, but declined to identify him, pending formal identification and next of kin being informed.

"It is understood he may have fallen from a balcony, but enquiries into the circumstances surrounding the death do continue," a police spokeswoman said Thursday, adding that the death was being treated as unexplained.

Double agent

According to British daily, The Times, Marwan offered his services to Israel in 1969 and, in the ensuing years, provided information on Egypt and the Arab world that senior Israeli ministers would describe as priceless.

But several Israeli newspapers claimed he was a double agent.

Major General Eli Zeira, chief of Israeli's military intelligence at the time of the Yom Kippur war in 1973, was one of those who considered Marwan a double agent who had misled the Israeli services.

On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched surprise attacks on Israel on the holiest day on the Jewish calendar to recover territory lost in the 1967 war.

Zeira, in his 2004 book "Myth Versus Reality: The Yom Kippur War - Failures and Lessons," said that Marwan, using the code name Babel, had met Mossad agents in London and had told them the Yom Kippur attack would take place at 6 p.m. instead of midday, when the war began.

Maariv newspaper too labeled Marwan, who lived in London with his wife Mona for 25 years, a double agent. "Mossad was the victim of a double agent who ridiculed it," the newspaper said.

According to Israel's Yediot Aharonot newspaper, Marwan was Wednesday due to meet in London with Aharon Bergman, an Israeli historian who was among journalists and writers who had claimed he had been a double agent.

"He called me three times on the day before his death and left three messages on my telephone, which was strange," Bergman told the newspaper.

"When I got (the messages), I called to ask him why he wanted to meet and he said he wanted to discuss 'headaches' plaguing him," Bergman added. "We agreed to go over things the following evening but he did not call again."

Haaretz newspaper said the "headaches" related to claims in Israel that he was a double agent, which had been haunting him.

Egypt in 1979 became the first Arab nation to sign a peace treaty with Israel, but relations between the two remain tense.

On Monday, Egypt's state security court sentenced an atomic engineer to 25 years in jail for betraying nuclear secrets to Mossad, in the second such case this year.