Jerusalem: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday he was working to repatriate the remains of Eli Cohen, an Israeli agent executed in 1965 after working deep undercover in Syria.
Cohen, whose story was the subject of a 2019 Netflix series “The Spy” starring Sacha Baron Cohen, was tried and hanged for espionage by Syria after he had infiltrated the top levels of the Damascus regime.
“I can tell you that with respect to Eli Cohen, we do not stop looking,” Netanyahu, who is in the midst of a re-election campaign ahead of polls later this month, told Army Radio.
The comment comes after the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said that Russian forces had been searching the Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus for the remains of Cohen and two Israeli soldiers.
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Wednesday, 24 February, 2021 - 08:45
People stage a pro-Iran rally in Damascus last year. (Getty Images) Damascus countryside – Asharq Al-Awsat
Iran has established a large “cultural, sports and recreational complex” in the southeastern countryside of the Syrian capital, Damascus, in an attempt to consolidate its influence in the war-torn country.
The complex is located in the town of Hujeira that is adjacent to a region held by Russia, in a move interpreted by locals as an act of defiance to Moscow, which had previously thwarted Iran’s attempts to form a new “Dahieh” in Damascus.
Dahieh refers to the Iran-backed Hezbollah stronghold in the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital Beirut.