Syria Kept Eli Cohen’s Last Will for 60 Years

Eli Cohen’s last will spent six decades in Syrian custody. On 18 May 2025, the sixtieth anniversary of his hanging in Damascus, Israel announced that it had recovered the original document along with roughly 2,500 items from the files of the intelligence service that caught him. His widow, Nadia, was shown material the Syrians had taken from his life: letters, false papers and the keys to his apartment.

Cohen had entered Syria posing as a businessman returning from South America. Reuters’s account describes an agent who worked his way into the political leadership and sent intelligence to his Israeli handlers. The apparent outsider had acquired contacts inside the state he was spying on.

The operation ended in 1965. Cohen was captured, tried and sentenced to death; Syria hanged him on 18 May. The recovered archive included the original court sentence and operational reports as well as private belongings. For his family, the same collection held the paperwork of his work and the paperwork of his execution.

Nadia had seen pieces of the documentary record before. Israel’s Defense Archive describes a January 2012 ceremony at which she received more than 200 pages assembled by a team led by archive director Ilana Alon. They included trial protocols, the death sentence and contemporary Syrian press material, translated by Intelligence Branch personnel. That earlier compilation and the original archive recovered in 2025 were separate bodies of material.

The recovery announcement supplied little operational detail. Israeli officials said Mossad worked with an allied foreign intelligence service; Reuters reported that a Syrian spokesperson did not immediately answer its question about how the material had left Damascus. The public account therefore identifies the collection and the Israeli claim of recovery, while leaving the route out of Syria obscure.

At the May 2025 presentation, Nadia told Netanyahu that bringing back her husband’s body remained her priority, according to the Associated Press. Netanyahu said the search continued. The suitcases held his papers, photographs and possessions; the ceremony still left his family waiting for a burial.