Sixty-years after he was publicly hanged, Israel's most famous spy's belongings are returned from Syria - but it's not what his family wants

Daily Mail​

18-05-2025

Israel has retrieved thousands of items belonging to the country's most famous spy after a covert operation in Syria, but it's not what his family wanted.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared some of the 2,500 items from the Syrian archive relating to 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 square in Damascus. But his remains have yet to be returned to Israel, where he is regarded as a national hero.
The items recently spirited into Israel include documents, recordings, photos, and items collected by Syrian intelligence after his capture in January 1965, letters in his own handwriting to his family in Israel, photographs of his activity during his operational mission in Syria and personal objects that were taken from his home after his capture.
Suitcases of items brought to Israel included worn folders stuffed with handwritten notes, keys to his apartment in Damascus, passports and false identification documents, missions from the Mossad to surveil specific people and places, and documentation of all the efforts of his widow, Nadia Cohen, begging world leaders for his release from prison.
Cohen's success in Syria was one of the Mossad spy agency's first major achievements, and the top-secret intelligence he obtained is widely credited with helping Israel prepare for its swift victory in the 1967 Middle East War.
Eli Cohen managed to forge close contacts within the political and military hierarchy of Israel's archenemy in the early 1960s, ultimately rising to become a top adviser to Syria's defense minister.
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.
From February 1962, Cohen worked his way up Syria's elite, sending coded messages back to his homeland.
In 1965, Cohen was caught radioing information to Israel.
Spooks from the Soviet Union's KGB agency 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.
His fingernails were ripped out while he was tortured, before he was hanged in Damascus Sqaure on May 18, 1965.
Cohen's body was covered in anti-Zionist slogans and left hanging for six hours.
In 2019, actor Sasha Baron Cohen portrayed Eli Cohen (no relation) in a six-episode Netflix series called '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 told Nadia Cohen on Sunday in Jerusalem.
Ahead of viewing the items, Nadia Cohen told Netanyahu that the most important thing was to bring back Cohen's body.
Netanyahu said Israel was continuing to work on locating Cohen's body.
Last week, Israel recovered the body of an Israeli soldier from Syria who had been missing for more than four decades, after he was killed during a clash 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 said.
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.