Possessions of Israel’s most well-known spy recovered — 60 years after he was executed in Syria

Israel has retrieved 1000’s of things belonging to the nation’s most well-known spy after a covert operation in Syria. 

On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared a number of the 2,500 gadgets from the Syrian archive regarding Eli Cohen, an Israeli spy who infiltrated the political echelon in Syria, with Cohen’s widow. Sunday marked 60 years since Cohen was hanged in a sq. in Damascus.

The gadgets not too long ago spirited into Israel embrace paperwork, recordings, pictures, and gadgets collected by Syrian intelligence after his seize in January 1965, letters in his personal handwriting to his household in Israel, images of his exercise throughout his operational mission in Syria and private objects that have been taken from his dwelling after his seize.

Among the many gadgets recovered was a handwritten will penned by Cohen hours earlier than his execution, Agence France-Presse reported.

Suitcases of things delivered to Israel included worn folders full of handwritten notes, keys to his residence in Damascus, passports and false identification paperwork, missions from the Mossad to surveil particular folks and locations, and documentation of all of the efforts of his widow, Nadia Cohen, begging world leaders for his launch from jail.

A Syrian authorities spokesperson didn’t instantly reply to a Reuters information company request for touch upon how the gadgets had been retrieved from Syria.

Cohen, who was born in Egypt to a Jewish household, was despatched by Mossad to Syria, the place he posed as a Syrian businessman named Kamal Amin Taabet, the BBC reported.  After befriending influential political, enterprise and navy figures, he was in a position to get hold of secret data, which he handed again to Israel. 

Cohen’s success in Syria was one of many Mossad spy company’s first main achievements, and the top-secret intelligence he obtained is broadly credited with serving to Israel put together for its swift victory within the 1967 Center East Warfare.

Eli Cohen managed to forge shut contacts throughout the political and navy hierarchy of Israel’s archenemy within the early Nineteen Sixties, in the end rising to turn into a high adviser to Syria’s protection minister. In 1965, Cohen was caught radioing data to Israel. He was tried and hanged in a Damascus sq. on Could 18, 1965. His stays have but to be returned to Israel, the place he’s considered a nationwide hero.

Isreal beforehand recovered a watch belonging to Cohen from Syria, the BBC reported in 2018. Particulars of how Israel bought maintain of the watch weren’t disclosed, aside from it was returned “in a special Mossad operation.”

In 2019, actor Sacha Baron Cohen portrayed Eli Cohen (no relation) in a six-episode Netflix sequence referred to as “The Spy.”

“We conducted a special operation by the Mossad, by the State of Israel, to bring his (Eli Cohen’s) archive, which had been in the safes of the Syrian intelligence for 60 years,” Netanyahu instructed Nadia Cohen on Sunday in Jerusalem.

Forward of viewing the gadgets, Nadia Cohen instructed Netanyahu that a very powerful factor was to carry again Cohen’s physique. Netanyahu stated Israel was persevering with to work on finding Cohen’s physique. Final week, Israel recovered the physique of an Israeli soldier from Syria who had been lacking for greater than 4 a long time, after he was killed throughout a conflict with Syrian forces in Lebanon in 1982.

“Eli is an Israeli legend. He’s the greatest agent Israeli intelligence has had in the years the state existed. There was no one like him,” Netanyahu stated.