Mossad's bungling overseas

By STUART DYE

Mossad enjoys a high reputation among world intelligence communities but has become notorious for falsifying foreign nations' passports and for botched undercover operations abroad.

Most recently, two Israelis were sentenced to three years' jail after pleading guilty to approaching a prohibited military area in Cyprus.

Udi Hargov and Igal Damary were spotted loitering in an area where a secret shipment of Army equipment was being unloaded - a shipment about which only the National Guard hierarchy knew.

The men were arrested at a fishing village on the southern coast. At their seaside apartment detectives found radio transmitters tuned in to police frequencies.

The men said they were part of a crack anti-terrorist unit to prevent an act of terror against Israel.

They denied spying on Cyprus on behalf of Turkey, but refused to say what the mission was.

However, it is believed to have been a bungled Mossad operation, possibly related to anti-aircraft missiles the Greek-Cypriot Government was planning to deploy on the island.

There were other embarrassments only months earlier. A self-confessed Israeli spy was given a one-year suspended prison sentence by a Swiss court for his part in a bungled wire-tapping operation.

The spy, known only by his pseudonym Issac Bental, was also barred from entering Switzerland for five years for what sentencing judge Hans Wipraechtiger called a "callous violation of Swiss sovereignty".

Bental's target was a Swiss citizen of Lebanese origin, who Mossad thought had links with Hizbollah Islamic extremists.

In March 1999 a retired agent was convicted of faking reports suggesting Syria was about to attack Israel.

A year earlier, two Mossad agents posing as Canadian tourists were captured in Amman after attacking a Hamas leader, Khalid Mashal, with a high-tech device intended to poison him. Mashal's life was saved after he was treated with an antidote demanded of the Israelis by a furious King Hussein.

A deal was reached to spare the agents from trial in Jordan by exchanging them for Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, imprisoned in Israel.

But the diplomatic fall-out resulted in Canada withdrawing its ambassador in Israel in protest at the use of its passports for espionage.

Since that incident Canadian passports have been off limits, say Mossad sources.