Espionage at the Biological Institute

Professor Avraham Marcus Klinberg, the Soviet spy who is believed to be in possession of Israel's maximum security secrets in the field of chemical and biological warfare, hopes to go free out of the Israeli prison in two weeks after the court ordered his release.

The state attorney said Klinger should be kept in prison until after the High Court reviews an appeal against his release.

Klinberg was born in Poland to a family of rabbis. During the WW II he became a colonel in the Soviet army and was considered one of the world's experts on biological warfare. He immigrated to Israel in 1948, joined the Israeli army and was later appointed head of Epidemiology at the Institute for Biological Research in Nes Tziona, south of Tel Aviv.

In 1983 he disappeared and no one had a clue where he was until some years later when the German magazine, Die Welt, reported that Israel and the Soviet Union were holding secret negotiations to release a major Soviet spy. That spy was later found to be Klinberg, who had been sentenced 18 years in prison for spying for the Soviets. All his requests for release were dismissed up to now for reasons defined as a security risk to the state.