Report: Mossad refused to pay $1 million fee for info on Eli Cohen's remains
The widow of Israel's famed late spy, executed in Damascus in 1965, is furious with the secret service agency
Nadia Cohen, widow of famed late Israeli spy Eli Cohen, expressed her fury at the Mossad after a report emerged from New Zealand that the son of ex-Syrian president Amin al-Hafiz offered information on Cohen’s remains at a price of $1 million that was turned down by the Israeli secret service agency.
“Isn’t Eli worth that price?” Nadia asked during an interview conducted by Hebrew-language outlet Ynet on Sunday.
The 84-year-old widow said that she turned to the incumbent head of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen, following the report. “Were they [Mossad] interested? I want him to clarify to me what’s that all about,” she said.
Eli Cohen is Israel’s most famous spy -- the subject of a newly released Netfix series starring Sacha Baron Cohen. He infiltrated Syria's top networks, including high positions in its government, from 1961 until his exposure four years later. He was executed in 1965 in a public hanging in Damascus square at the end of a five-month trial.
According to news outlet Newshub, New Zealand’s secret service probed into a lead in the Cohen case with a Syrian refugee living in Auckland. That refugee is Khalid al-Hafidh, the son of president Amin al-Hafiz, who oversaw Cohen’s execution.
In an interview with Newshub, he said that he’s the son of the “only person on this planet who knows where the remains are buried.”
However, the father has since died and with him the secret of Cohen’s burial place. Newshub claimed that Al-Hafidh does not know where the remains are, but that he was willing to “try” to help find the body in return for a fee.
“I don’t know if that man is lying or not,” Nadia Cohen told Ynet. “But that [incident] happened with the Mossad and that information should have reached us,” she concluded.