Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr has announced a review into his ministry's handling of the case of an Australian man who reportedly hanged himself in an Israeli jail in 2010.
On Tuesday, Australia's ABC News said the man, known as Prisoner X, was an Australian national called Ben Zygier.
The report said there was evidence to suggest Mr Zygier worked for Israel's spy agency Mossad.
Israel has not officially commented on the ABC report.
Speculation about the identity of the prisoner, whose existence was not officially acknowledged, had been rife since the story broke more than two years ago.
Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr told ABC that he was troubled by the investigation's findings.
Yolande Knell BBC News, Jerusalem
Two years ago the Israeli news website YNet reported only that an Israeli citizen was being held in Ayalon Prison, and later that he had committed suicide.
But if you asked any Israeli journalists - even informally and off-the-record - what they knew of the case of "Prisoner X", they would get visibly uncomfortable.
Gag orders are rarely used in Israel which likes to celebrate its democratic values like freedom of the press. However, when they are imposed, particularly in cases of national security, they are taken very seriously.
In the end it was the international dimension of this story that made it difficult to keep secret. As ABC prepared to air its report in Australia, the newspaper Haaretz reported on how Israeli media editors had been asked to cooperate with the government and withhold information that was "embarrassing to a certain government agency".
Yet there was nothing to stop Israelis from going online to find out the news from foreign media. Members of parliament here also asked the difficult questions that led to a partial lifting of the gag order.
Mr Carr told the programme Australian diplomats in Israel only knew of Mr Zygier's detention after his death. He said Mr Zygier's family had not made a complaint, in the absence of which there was little the Australian government could do.
However, the foreign ministry now says some officials were aware of his detention at the time,
'Held incommunicado'According to ABC's Foreign Correspondent programme, Mr Zygier was from Melbourne and went by the name of Ben Alon in Israel.
The programme said he had moved to Israel 10 years before his death. It said that at the time he died he was 34 years old, married to an Israeli woman and had two children.
Mr Zygier was found hanged in a cell in late 2010, months after he was imprisoned, and his body flown to Melbourne for burial the following week, ABC says.
When the story about Prisoner X first emerged, Israeli media said the unidentified man was being held incommunicado at Ayalon high-security prison in Ramle, central Israel.
ABC said he was incarcerated in a wing built to house Yigal Amir, the Israeli who assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. It said his cell was fitted with surveillance cameras designed to prevent incidents such as suicide.
The reason for his detention was not disclosed and his identification was so secret that even his guards did not know who he was, the programme said.
Restrictions relaxedIsrael never acknowledged the prisoner's existence but issued a gagging order in 2010 to prevent details of the case being published.
Media gagging orders in Israel are rare and issued in special cases concerning national security.
The Israeli prime minister's office called an emergency meeting of Israeli media chiefs after the ABC story was published on Tuesday, urging them not to publish "information pertaining to an incident that is very embarrassing to a certain government agency", Israel's Haaretz newspaper website reported.
An article about the Australian report which appeared in Haaretz on Tuesday was later removed.
However, on Wednesday reporting restrictions were partially lifted after members of the Knesset (parliament) asked questions about the case.
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