Ben Zygier, the Australian-born Mossad agent, unwittingly scuppered a top-sec ret operation to repatriate the bodies of three Israeli soldiers missing in Lebanon for three decades, according to an ABC report.
Tuesday night’s report claimed Zygier’s attempts to redeem himself in the eyes of his Mossad superiors backfired, prompting Mossad to abort its mission to repatriate the bodies of Zachary Baumel, Yehuda Katz and Tzvi Feldman, who died in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley during Israel’s invasion in 1982.
Zygier apparently blew the cover off the secret operation by exposing Ziad al-Homsi, a former commander of Lebanese forces in the Bekka Valley, as a Mossad agent, according to the report.
Al-Homsi, who said he was working as a double agent in a bid to use the corpses as a bargaining chip with the Israelis, told the ABC he was first recruited by Mossad in 2007 and later asked to help exhume the corpses after being given their precise location by the Israelis.
But the mission was exposed after Zygier, who was trying to turn a Hezbollah contact into a Mossad agent, revealed al-Homsi’s name in a bid to prove his credentials.
The Hezbollah agent told Lebanese intelligence sources that al-Homsi was an informer, and he was soon arrested and jailed, blowing the entire operation to repatriate the corpses.
Zygier, a Melbourne-born graduate of Hashomer Hatzair, was arrested in January 2010 by Shin Bet and jailed in secrecy under the name Prisoner X until he took his life 10 months later.
The case was shrouded in secrecy until the ABC exposed Prisoner X’s identity as Ben Zygier in February.