Israel Matzav

Mossad: That's a fanstasy

In an earlier post, I reported that Australian television is claiming that Ben Zygier, known as Prisoner X, was sent to jail for botching an operation to recover the bodies of three IDF soldiers who disappeared during the First Lebanon War (Operation Peace for Galilee).

Now, the former head of the Mossad division who deals with soldiers missing in action says that there was never any such operation planned by the Mossad. It didn't exist.

Australian state television said Zygier unwittingly sabotaged a secret 2007 Mossad mission to exhume the bodies of three Israeli tank crewmen captured and killed in a battle with Syrian forces, and disclosed the identity of an alleged Lebanese agent while making an unauthorized attempt to recruit a man he thought was a Hezbollah member.

The agent was tasked, according to an Australian Broadcasting Corporation report, with digging up the bodies of three fallen IDF soldiers killed in the 1982 Sultan Yacoub battle.
Rami Igra, who headed the Mossad’s MIA and Captive Persons Division, said the soldiers had been declared dead by the Military Rabbinate, and that it was wrong to believe that Mossad would launch an operation to retrieve the bodies.

“The rabbinate would not declare them dead unless it had undeniable evidence. The claim that an operation would be launched to retrieve [the bodies] is not only empty, it is science fiction,” Igra said.

“Zygier was facing 22 years in prison – that kind of charge is for treachery, not an imaginary operation,” Igra said. “These claims are nonsense.”

Hmmm.

Labels: Hezbullah, Lebanon, Mossad, Operation Peace for Galilee, Prisoner X, Syria

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:27 AM