The Israeli Mossad allegedly tried to infiltrate the French intelligence services by trying to recruit double agents during a joint operation to learn more about Syria’s chemical weapons program, French newspaper Le Monde reported on Sunday.
According to the paper, from 2010 to 2012, Israeli and French intelligence agencies carried out a joint operation codenamed “Ratafia.”
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Several Mossad agents operating under false names were reportedly sent to Paris in an effort to recruit a Syrian engineer with vital information about Syrian President Bashar Assad’s chemical weapons arsenal.
According to Le Monde, Mossad succeeded in recruiting the Syrian engineer. He reportedly provided Israel with the information it needed to prove that the Syrians were exploiting their scientific cooperation with the European Union to further develop their chemical weapons. This led the EU in 2011 to cancel its cooperation agreement with Syria.
The Ratafia operation was led by the head of the Mossad station in Paris, identified in the Le Monde report only by the initials D.K.
The French General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI) claimed that D.K. took advantage of his daily contact with French agents to form closer ties with them, with one French agent being photographed arriving at D.K.’s home for Shabbat dinner.
The same agent told his superiors he was going to Dubai with his family on vacation, but instead went to Israel to meet with Mossad agents in Jerusalem.
Suspicions also arose that the French agent received gifts and cash during that time in violation of the agency’s internal rules.
The French intelligence agencies saw this as a red line that was crossed between friendship among colleagues and an illegitimate attempt to recruit agents.
The heads of the French intelligence agencies filed a complaint with their counterparts in Mossad, resulting in the Mossad station chief D.K. and another Israeli diplomat being sent back to Israel. They have since left the Mossad and are now in the private sector.
Le Monde reported that several of the French agents who participated in the Ratafia operation are expected to lose their security clearance and be transferred to another agency.
The Mossad’s alleged recruiting efforts were discovered when another French agency, entrusted with information security, photographed the French agents with their Israeli counterparts.
The information about this top secret operation was made public as part of an ongoing judicial investigation against Bernard Squarcini, who at the time headed the internal French intelligence agency DGSI.
Squarcini said in his questioning that he was informed by French security services that a “service provider was fraternizing too closely with former French agents who were part of a joint operation with the Mossad. This was likely an attempt by the Mossad to infiltrate French intelligence services.”
According to Squarcini, he came across the two Israelis suspected of trying to recruit the French agents again “by chance” when they returned to France on business.
French authorities are now seeking to question the two former Mossad agents.
By Ynet News
(Translated and edited by Yaara Shalom)
