Jerusalem: Former Mossad spy Rafi Eitan, who commanded the audacious 1960 capture of top Nazi Adolf Eichmann, died Saturday aged 92, Israeli public radio announced. “He died in the afternoon at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov hospital, the radio said, without giving further details.
Eitan, the handler for Jonathan Pollard, a US Navy analyst who passed Israel thousands of top secret documents, was himself wanted by American authorities for a time.
“Rafi was one of the heroes of the state of Israel’s intelligence service in countless acts for Israel’s security,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. “We mourn his passing.”
Eitan also won a rare eulogy from the ‘Shin Bet’ domestic security service, for whom he had worked. “Rafi, who was one of the founders of the Shin Bet’s operations branch, led and participated in dozens of groundbreaking operations that will remain unknown for many years to come,” agency chief Nadav Argaman wrote in a statement. “We grieve at his passing and are proud to continue on his path.”
Eitan was born on a kibbutz in British-ruled Palestine in November 1926. He was nicknamed ‘Rafi the Stinker’ after he fell into a sewer during a military operation prior to the establishment of Israel in 1948.
After his service in the elite Palmach arm of the paramilitary Haganah organisation, the forerunner of the Israeli army, Eitan joined Mossad in the 1950s. He rose to become the agency’s operations chief, commanding the operation to snatch Eichmann in the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires and smuggle him to Israel. The mastermind of the Nazis’ ‘Final Solution’, Eichmann was then tried and hanged.
In 2006, at the age of 79, Eitan was elected to Israel’s Parliament as head of the Pensioners’ Party and appointed minister for senior citizens.
AFP