Kidnappings and attacks: Spectacular Mossad missions
Published: Wednesday, Sep 18th 2024, 15:50
Back to Live Feed
Hundreds of radio receivers explode simultaneously in Lebanon. Many Hezbollah fighters are said to be among the thousands injured.
The pro-Iranian Shia militia blames Israel for the coordinated pager attack. This would be one of a number of spectacular operations by the Israeli foreign intelligence service Mossad.
Argentina, 1960: Kidnapping of Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann
The kidnapping of German Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann by the Israeli secret service is legendary. Mossad spies tracked down Eichmann, who was one of the main perpetrators of the deportation and murder of European Jews, in Argentina in 1960. They overpower him on the street in Buenos Aires. Eichmann is taken by plane to Israel unnoticed, where he is sentenced to death and executed in 1962.
Jordan, 1997: Failed assassination attempt on Chaled Mashaal
The attempted murder of Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, now a kind of "foreign minister" of the Islamist organization, in September 1997 is considered one of the Mossad's greatest failures. Israeli agents had attempted to spray the then Hamas planning director for the Jordanian capital Amman with a deadly poison. Jordan's King Hussein reacted so indignantly to the poison attack that he forced the then and current head of government Benjamin Netanyahu to have an antidote delivered to save Mashaal.
In order to free the two agents arrested in the attack from Jordanian custody, Israel is forced to release the spiritual Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin. In 2004, he dies in a targeted Israeli air strike.
Switzerland, 1998: Mossad agents caught trying to eavesdrop
In February 1998, five agents are caught trying to install bugging equipment in a house on the outskirts of Bern. The police arrest one man and release four after checking their false passports. The arrested agent gets off with a suspended sentence. The incident played a key role in the resignation of the then head of the Mossad, Danny Jatom.
Dubai, 2010: Assassination of Hamas military leader Mahmoud al-Mabhuh
In January 2010, Hamas military leader Mahmoud al-Mabhuh is murdered in his hotel room in Dubai. He is first sedated with medication and then suffocated. The Israeli media named al-Mabhuh as the mastermind behind the abduction and murder of Israeli soldiers in 1989. The Arab authorities suspected 27 perpetrators who had entered the country with forged European passports and were said to have left Dubai immediately after the crime. Around a month later, Dubai's police chief accused the Mossad, while Israel denied any involvement.
©Keystone/SDA
English 
German 
French 
Spanish 
Arabic