According to reports, Israel is trying to find the remains of executed Mossad super agent Eli Cohen.
Cohen, a spy for the feared Israeli intelligence service, was hanged in Damascus in 1965 after his cover was blown.
The agent, who was played by Sacha Baron Cohen in the 2019 Netflix drama The Spy, was recruited by Mossad while working in Tel Aviv as a clerk for an insurance company.
He worked under deep cover as an Argentinian-Syrian businessman named Amin Thaabet.
Although his main job was to report on military and political developments in Syria, Cohen was also assigned to inform his bosses about Nazis living in the country’s capital.
Mossad’s main targets included war criminals Alois Brunner – the former deputy of Holocaust architect Adolf Eichmann – and fellow mass murderer Franz Rademacher.
In 1962 he tried to kill Rademacher with a letter bomb.
Two Palestinian officials claimed Monday that Israel, through Russian mediators, was trying to find Cohen’s remains as well as those of a missing soldier.
According to reports, Israel is trying to find the remains of executed Mossad super agent Eli Cohen. Cohen was played by Sacha Baron Cohen in the 2019 Netflix drama The Spy
Cohen, a spy for the feared Israeli intelligence service, was hanged in Damascus in 1965 after his cover was blown
Israel has been trying to find and repatriate Cohen’s body for years, and in 2021 a war monitor said Russian forces had searched the Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus for his remains, along with those of two Israeli soldiers.
A Palestinian official in Damascus said Monday that “contact has been made with us through mediators so that we can assist in finding 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 because 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 MailOnline: ‘We know that Cohen’s funeral was a Muslim funeral, held in a secret location.
‘We don’t really know anything more.
‘If states collapse and new regimes are built up, that is within the realm of the possible [that his remains will be returned].
‘The new government in Syria will not want to do this without getting something in return. Maybe they do it through a secret operation.’
From February 1962 onwards, Cohen worked his way up into the Syrian elite and sent coded messages back to his home country.
Two Palestinian officials claimed Monday that Israel, through Russian mediators, was trying to find Cohen’s remains as well as those of a missing soldier. Above: Cohen with two unknown co-defendants during his trial in Damascus, May 1965
The spy’s intelligence played a major role in Israel’s defeat of Syria in the Six-Day War in 1967.
His family thought he worked as a furniture buyer for the Ministry of Defense.
Cohen’s activities came to an abrupt end in 1965, when the Syrian counterintelligence service requested assistance from the Soviet Union’s KGB service.
They brought specialized radio equipment to the Middle East that was able to locate secret broadcasts in Damascus.
They discovered that signals were coming from Cohen’s house. Armed men kicked in his door and arrested him.
Cohen was transmitting a secret code when he was caught.
His fingernails were pulled out while he was tortured before being hanged in Damascus Square.
His body was covered in anti-Zionist slogans and left hanging for six hours.
From February 1962 onwards, Cohen worked his way up into the Syrian elite, sending coded messages back to his home country. Above: The spy with wife Nadia and his eldest daughter Sofia in 1961
But his remains never returned home despite pleas from his family.
In 2019, the eldest of Cohen’s three children denounced the Netflix portrayal of her father.
Sofia Ben-Dor told MailOnline: ‘The performance was not very deep or complex and contained many things that came from the director’s imagination.
‘It showed my father as a flamboyant womanizer who spent a lot of money and took reckless risks because he had feelings of inferiority.
‘In reality 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 the Mossad had. The tragedy was not a compliment to my father or my family.’
Cohen was depicted as a philanderer with seventeen lovers who obtained a wealth of secrets from Syria’s rich and powerful by organizing orgies with beautiful women.
Ms Ben-Dor added: “He wasn’t extravagant and he didn’t show off,” she said. ‘He wasn’t a womanizer.
The Spy depicted Cohen as a philanderer with 17 lovers who extracted a wealth of secrets from Syria’s rich and powerful by staging orgies with beautiful women.
Cohen told his wife Nadia that he had gotten a job as a furniture buyer for the Syrian Ministry of Defense to explain why he would spend so much time away from her.
‘He was very modest and conservative in his way of life, 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, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was working to repatriate Cohen’s remains, three years after Mossad said it had recovered a watch belonging to the spy and brought it back to Israel.
In 2019, Israel released two Syrian prisoners in a “gesture of goodwill” after the remains of soldier Zachary Baumel, missing since 1982, were returned.
Russian 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 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 reported missing and presumed killed. The last two remain missing.