Famed Israeli spy Eli Cohen’s widow angry at Mossad over new report
The widow of famed Israeli spy Eli Cohen, who was executed in Damascus in 1965 and then buried in a secret location, expressed anger at the Mossad spy agency on Sunday, after the publication of a report exposing a possible new lead on the whereabouts of her husband’s remains.
Eli Cohen (in the middle) posing as Arab merchant Kamel Amin Thaabet, with his friends from the Syrian army on the Golan Heights overlooking Israel, mid-1960s. Credit: Syrian military personnel photo via Wikimedia Commons.
The report, by New Zealand’s Newshub, revealed that Khalid al-Hafidh, the son of the late ex-Syrian President Amin al-Hafiz, had offered to help the Mossad find Cohen’s remains, but was turned down by the spy agency when he asked for $1 million in exchange for his services. Al-Hafiz was in power in Syria when Cohen was executed.
According to the report, al-Hafidh did not claim to know where Cohen’s remains were, but said he was the son of the “only person on this planet” who did know and was willing to “try” to help find the body.
“I don’t know if that man is lying or not,” Eli’s widow, Nadia Cohen, 84, told Ynet on Sunday. “But that [incident] happened with the Mossad, and that information should have reached us.”
“Isn’t Eli worth that price?” she added.
She called on Mossad head Yossi Cohen to clarify the report.
“Were they [Mossad] interested? I want him [Cohen] to clarify to me what’s that all about.”
Eli Cohen, the subject of a newly released Netflix series starring Sacha Baron Cohen, infiltrated the highest echelons of power in Syria from 1961 until he was exposed four years later. He was executed in a public hanging in Damascus after a five-month trial.
JNS
