Israel is attempting to find the remains of executed Mossad super agent Eli Cohen, according to reports.
Cohen, a spy for Israel’s feared intelligence agency, was hanged in Damascus in 1965 after his cover was blown.
The agent, who was depicted by Sacha Baron Cohen in 2019 Netflix drama The Spy, was recruited by Mossad while working in Tel Aviv as a clerk for an insurance firm.
He was working under deep cover as an Argentinian-Syrian businessman called Amin Thaabet.
Although his main task was to report on military and political developments in Syria, Cohen was also told to inform his bosses about Nazis living in the country’s capital.
Among Mossad’s top targets were war criminals Alois Brunner – the former deputy to Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann – and fellow mass murderer Franz Rademacher.
He attempted to assassinate Rademacher with a letter bomb in 1962.
Two Palestinian officials claimed on Monday that Israel, via Russian mediators, was trying to find both Cohen’s remains and those of a missing soldier.
Israel is attempting to find the remains of executed Mossad super agent Eli Cohen, according to reports. Cohen was depicted by Sacha Baron Cohen in 2019 Netflix drama The Spy
Cohen, a spy for Israel’s feared intelligence agency, was hanged in Damascus in 1965 after his cover was blown
Israel for years has been trying to find and repatriate the body of Cohen, and in 2021 a war monitor said Russian forces had been searching the Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus for his remains, along with those of two Israeli soldiers.
A Palestinian official in Damascus on Monday said ‘contact was established with us via mediators in order for us to help find the remains of an Israeli soldier who has been missing since 1982’, without identifying the missing soldier.
‘Contacts are also underway to determine the location where the remains of the Israeli agent known as Eli Cohen are buried,’ the source added, requesting anonymity as the matter is sensitive.
Israeli historian Professor Danny Orbach, who wrote about the spy in his 2022 book Fugitives: A History of Nazi Mercenaries During the Cold War, told : ‘We know that Cohen’s funeral was a Muslim one, it was held in a secret place.
‘We really don’t know more than that.
‘When states collapse and new regimes are being built, it is in the realm of the possible [that his remains will be returned].
‘The new government in Syria will not want to do it without getting some return for it. They may do it in a secret operation.’
From February 1962, Cohen worked his way up Syria’s elite, sending coded messages back to his homeland.
Two Palestinian officials claimed on Monday that Israel, via Russian mediators, was trying to find both Cohen’s remains and those of a missing soldier. Above: Cohen with two unidentified co-defendants at his trial in Damascus, May 1965
The spy’s intelligence was instrumental in Israel’s defeat of Syria in the Six Day War in 1967.
His family believed he was working as a furniture buyer for the Ministry of Defence.
Cohen’s activities came to an abrupt end in 1965, when Syrian counter-intelligence called in spooks from the Soviet Union’s KGB agency.
They brought in specialist radio equipment to the Middle East which was able to pinpoint secret broadcasts being made inside Damascus.
They found that signals were coming from Cohen’s home. Armed men kicked down his door and arrested him.
Cohen was in the middle of making a secret code transmission when he was caught.
His fingernails were ripped out while he was tortured, before he was hanged in Damascus Sqaure.
His body was covered in anti-Zionist slogans and left hanging for six hours.
From February 1962, Cohen worked his way up Syria’s elite, sending coded messages back to his homeland. Above: The spy with wife Nadia and his eldest daughter Sofia in 1961
But his remains have never been returned home despite pleas from his family.
In 2019, the eldest of Cohen’s three children slammed Netflix’s depiction of her father.
Sofia Ben-Dor told : ‘The portrayal wasn’t very deep or complex and it included many things that were from the director’s imagination.
‘It showed my father as a flamboyant, big-spending womaniser who took reckless risks because he had feelings of inferiority.
‘In truth, my father was very sure of himself and very strong and happy with his life, he was not so poor and miserable.
‘He was the best Mossad had. The drama was not a compliment for my father or my family.’
Cohen was depicted as a philanderer with 17 lovers who got a cache of secrets out of Syria’s rich and powerful by hosting orgies with beautiful women.
Ms Ben-Dor added: ‘He wasn’t extravagant and he didn’t show off,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t a womaniser.
In The Spy, Cohen was depicted as a philanderer with 17 lovers who got a cache of secrets out of Syria’s rich and powerful by hosting orgies with beautiful women
Cohen told his wife Nadia that he had got a job as a furniture buyer with the Syrian Ministry of Defence to explain why he would be spending so much time away from her
‘He was very modest and conservative in his way of living in every aspect of his life.
‘As for the reports about his lovers, I don’t want to know about this part of him. It was his job.’
In 2021, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was working to repatriate Cohen’s remains, three years after Mossad said it had retrieved a watch belonging to the spy and brought it back to Israel.
In 2019, Israel released two Syrian prisoners in a ‘goodwill gesture’ after the remains of soldier Zachary Baumel, missing since 1982, were returned.
Russia’s president Vladimir Putin said the remains had been found by the Russian and Syrian armies, but a Syrian official denied Damascus had knowledge of the repatriation plans or details behind the discovery.
Israeli soldiers fought against Syrian forces in a battle in June 1982 in the Lebanese village of Sultan Yacoub, near the Syrian border.
Baumel and two other soldiers, Zvi Feldman and Yehuda Katz, had since been listed as missing and presumed killed. The latter two remain missing.