60 Years After Syria Publicly Hanged Mossad Legend Spy Eli Cohen, Israel Recovers His 2,500 Items
In a significant intelligence triumph, Israel has successfully retrieved approximately 2,500 items belonging to Eli Cohen, the nation’s most celebrated spy, through a covert operation in Syria. The recovery coincides with the 60th anniversary of Cohen’s public execution in Damascus.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented some of these recovered items to Cohen’s widow, Nadia, during a meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday. The collection includes handwritten letters to his family, surveillance photographs from his undercover mission, and personal possessions confiscated from his Damascus residence following his arrest in January 1965.
The recovered archive contains remarkable historical artifacts: worn folders with handwritten intelligence notes, keys to Cohen’s Syrian apartment, forged identification documents, Mossad operational directives, and documentation of Nadia Cohen’s appeals to world leaders for her husband’s release.
In a covert and complex Mossad operation, in cooperation with an allied foreign intelligence service, the official Syrian archive on Eli Cohen with thousands of findings that were held for decades by the Syrian security forces have been brought to Israelhttps://t.co/ioQO9peuS3 pic.twitter.com/F8mG3QNlY8
— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) May 18, 2025
Cohen’s extraordinary infiltration of Syria’s political and military leadership during the early 1960s stands as one of the Mossad’s earliest major successes. The critical intelligence he gathered is widely acknowledged to have contributed significantly to Israel’s rapid victory in the 1967 Middle East War.
Rising to become a trusted advisor to Syria’s defense minister, Cohen was eventually discovered transmitting information to Israel in 1965. Following his capture, he was tried and publicly hanged in Damascus on May 18, 1965. His remains have never been returned to Israel, where he is honored as a national hero.
The spy’s remarkable story gained international attention in 2019 through the Netflix series “The Spy,” with Sacha Baron Cohen portraying the unrelated Israeli operative.
During Sunday’s meeting, Netanyahu described the recovery operation: “We conducted a special operation by the Mossad, by the State of Israel, to bring his archive, which had been in the safes of the Syrian intelligence for 60 years.”
While viewing the items, Nadia Cohen emphasized to Netanyahu that recovering her husband’s remains remains her primary concern. The Prime Minister assured her that efforts to locate Cohen’s body continue, noting Israel’s recent recovery of another soldier’s remains from Syria after more than 40 years.
“Eli is an Israeli legend. He’s the greatest agent Israeli intelligence has had in the years the state existed. There was no one like him,” Netanyahu stated.