Israel seeks to reach grave site of spy Eli Cohen

Israeli authorities have made contact with “foreign parties and Syrians” to try to locate the burial place of famous Israeli spy Eli Cohen, executed in 1965 in Syria, the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar reported on Saturday, citing diplomatic sources. . The information was picked up by the daily Haaretz.

Eli Cohen was an Israeli spy who was hanged in a public square in Syria in 1965 after infiltrating the highest levels of the Syrian regime at the time. His intelligence work provided crucial information that Israel used during the Six-Day War in June 1967.

Entering Syria under the identity of a businessman named Kamel Amin Thabet, Eli Cohen claimed to come from a Syrian family that had emigrated to Latin America. Local authorities concealed his burial site and Damascus has consistently rejected all mediation efforts to exchange his remains for Arab prisoners.

On Sunday, Syrian rebel forces announced the collapse of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and the “liberation” of Damascus after a rapid offensive, ending more than five decades of rule by the Assad family, which began in 1970 after a series of military dictatorships.