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Executed Israeli Spy Eli Cohen's Secret Files
(Ha'aretz) Yossi Melman - On May 18, 60 years since his execution in Syria, the Mossad revealed 2,500 documents, recordings, and personal items belonging to Israeli spy Eli Cohen. The trove, acquired "in cooperation with an allied foreign intelligence service," includes recordings and documentation from Cohen's interrogation by the Syrian secret service, details about with whom he was in contact, handwritten letters to his family in Israel, photographs from his operations in Syria, and personal belongings seized from his home after his arrest. "Our Man in Damascus" had successfully infiltrated the highest levels of the Ba'ath Party and the Syrian government. In recent weeks, multiple reports have suggested that officials from Israel's security establishment held meetings with envoys of Ahmad al-Sharaa, Syria's interim president. According to Reuters, Syria's leadership approved the handover of the belongings of Cohen to Israel "in a bid to ease Israeli hostility and show goodwill to U.S. President Donald Trump." While it is not known if the materials were transferred through Saudi channels, in recent years, there have been credible accounts of long-standing secret collaboration between Israel's Mossad and Saudi intelligence. This cooperation included meetings between every Mossad director over the past three decades and their Saudi counterparts, as well as high-level meetings between senior Saudi royals and Israeli prime ministers. There have also been covert deals involving Israeli arms and technology sales.