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Once upon a time in Damascus, Kamal Amin Thaabet moved freely among Syria's elite, trusted and unseen. But behind the carefully built persona was Eli Cohen, an Israeli spy feeding crucial secrets to his homeland. Sixty years ago, his double life ended with a public execution.
This week, Israel retrieved thousands of items linked to Cohen from a covert Syrian archive.
Who Was Eli Cohen?
Born in 1924 in Alexandria, Egypt, to Syrian Jewish parents, Eli Cohen was no ordinary man. His fluency in Arabic, English, and French made him uniquely suited for espionage.
After being expelled from Egypt following the Suez Crisis, Cohen settled in Israel in 1957, where he worked as a translator and accountant, until the Israeli spy agency, Mossad, saw his potential.
By 1960, Eli Cohen was recruited for a mission that would become legendary. After training, he moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, under the alias Kamal Amin Thaabet, a Syrian businessman. There, he built trust within the Syrian expatriate community, making contacts that would open doors into Syria's political and military elite.
— Hananya Naftali (@HananyaNaftali) May 18, 2020In 1962, Cohen made the risky move to Damascus, where he quickly became a trusted insider. His cover story was impeccable, and he used his connections to rise to the highest circles of power. When a Bathist coup in 1963 brought some of Eli Cohen's Argentine contacts to power, his access grew even deeper.
Between 1961 and 1965, Cohen gathered crucial intelligence on Syrian military strategies, especially regarding the Golan Heights, a contested region of strategic importance to Israel. His access was so deep that he was considered for high-ranking positions, including deputy minister of defence.
This espionage was vital, particularly after a Ba'athist military coup in 1963 brought to power leaders who were Cohen's former contacts from Argentina. Cohen's intelligence significantly aided Israel's preparedness in the years leading up to the Six-Day War of 1967.
Through him, Israel received vital intelligence on Syrian military plans and operations.
Eli Cohen's success came at a price. Despite warnings from his Mossad handlers, he was careless with his radio transmissions, sending signals too frequently and at predictable times. This mistake gave Syrian counterintelligence the chance they needed.
In January 1965, Cohen was caught red-handed transmitting messages. After a brief trial, he was publicly executed in May that year.
In 2019, Netflix released The Spy, a limited series dramatising his years-long undercover operation in Syria, with Sacha Baron Cohen portraying Eli Cohen.
Recently, in a covert operation, Israel retrieved over 2,500 items from Syrian intelligence archives - documents, letters, photographs, personal effects, and mission records related to Eli Cohen's work. These artefacts, including his handwritten letters to family, false passports, keys to his Damascus apartment, and mission briefings, were presented by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Cohen's widow, Nadia.
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