5/18/2025–|Last update: 19:46 (Mecca time)
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced today, Sunday, that it brought 2,500 documents, image and personal purposes from Syria to the Israeli intelligence agent (Mossad) Eli Cohen in a secret operation.
The Mossad said, in a statement, that bringing Cohen’s documents was the result of a “secret and complex operation carried out by the Mossad Intelligence and Special Operations Agency, in cooperation with a strategic partner device”, without detecting it or adding more details.
Israeli media reported that the Mossad brought Cohen documents, which was executed in Syria in 1965 in the Marjeh Square in Damascus, from the Syrian archive, which the Syrian security forces retained for decades.
Israeli media revealed that among his personal property is the keys to his apartment in Damascus, passports and forged certificates he used, and many pictures of his secret work in Syria, including footage of him with senior military officials and Syrian governmental officials at that time, as well as many notes in the books and notes collected from his home about tasks he received from the Mossad, as well as the original will that Cohen wrote hours ago. His execution, after the Syrian intelligence revealed that he was a spy of the occupation.
Mossad chief David Bernie considered that bringing the spy archive Cohen is a “great achievement and a step in paying the investigation to determine the place of his burial in Damascus”, in light of Israel’s demand to restore his body.
The Syrian authorities have not yet commented on the Israeli declaration to bring Cohen’s documents from the archive of the Syrian security forces.
4 years of spy
In January 1962, Cohen arrived in Damascus for the first time on orders from Israeli intelligence with a forged identity, defining himself as a Syrian merchant who is interested in exporting Syrian products to Europe, to build relations with political and military leaders in Syria, with a network of relationships that enabled him to reach high levels in the state.
Two months after his residence in Damascus, they impersonated the name “Kamel Amin Thabet”, he sent the first message to Israel, to continue to do so at the rate of two message each week.
Between March 15 and August 29, 1964, he sent more than a hundred messages to Israel, containing information about government sessions, the owners of power centers in the army and the party, and the number of tanks in Quneitra.
He was arrested in January 1965 and then was executed on May 18, 1965, and was executed in the Marjeh Square and his body remained hanging there about 6 hours after his execution.
In the nineties, Israel stipulated that Cohen’s remains to hold talks with Syria, and unconfirmed news indicated that the Syrian rejection of the condition was caused by the lack of knowledge of its powers at the location of the body, especially since the place of its burial became unknown after being transferred from its place 3 times, in order to avoid the possibility of its steal by the Israeli Mossad.