The Hanging of Mossad Agent Eli Cohen

The lifeless body of Eli Cohen dangles at Marjeh Square (Martyrs Square) in the Syrian capital Damascus on Tuesday, May 18^th, 1965.

About the inscription pinned onto Eli Cohen's execution shroud:

'Colonel Dalli then attached to the white sackcloth shroud a large placard, the invariable last act of a Syrian execution. On it was written, in Arabic script, the sentence of the Military Court. It read:

Eliahu Ben-Shaul Cohen was sentenced to death in the name of the Arab people of Syria, having been found guilty of penetrating into a military sector and communicating secret information to the enemy".'

- "The Final Night”, pp 5-6 Chapter 1 of The Spy From Israel by Ben Dan, published by Vallentine, Mitchell & Co. Ltd, 1969.

Forty-year-old Cohen had posed as a returnee Syrian businessman from Argentina named "Kamel Amin Thaabet". He managed to penetrate the highest echelons of the Syrian political and military establishment, including becoming the Chief Adviser to the Syrian Minister of Defence.

He was caught by Soviet-made tracking equipment which enabled Syrian counterintelligence to locate the source of coded transmissions to Israeli intelligence.

He was tried by a special military tribunal and condemned to death on May 8^th, 1965. Pleas for clemency from world leaders were ignored by the Syrian military government who proceeded to hang him at Marjeh Square (Martyrs Square) in Damascus

Efforts by Cohen's family to have his remains repatriated to Israel have so far been unsuccessful.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2024).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Operation Northwoods: A Planned False Flag Operation Designed To Provide The United States With An Excuse To Invade Cuba

Operation Northwoods involved U.S. intelligence staging False Flag incidents involving the hijacking of planes, the blowing up of ships and the shooting to death of innocent civilians on the American mainland which would be falsely attributed to Cubans operating on behalf of the Castro government.

The public outrage would then provide a justification for invading Cuba and overthrowing Fidel Castro.

Operation Northwoods was approved in 1962 by General Lyman Lemnitzer when he was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but was rejected by the Secretary of Defence, Robert McNamara under the instruction of President John F. Kennedy.

It is not known who designed the Northwoods project, but many are almost certain that the architect was Air Force Brigadier-General (later Major General) Edward Lansdale. Lansdale, a specialist in unorthodox warfare, had been working at that time on Operation Mongoose, an overarching plan to assassinate Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader.

Images.

1. Document.

Operation Northwoods was signed off by General Lyman Lemnitzer, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

2. Top right.

Lyman Lemnitzer, the Four Star General who approved of Operation Northwoods.

3. Bottom right.

Major General Edward Lansdale shortly before his retirement from the United States Air Force.

(c) Adeyinka Makinde (2023).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Rare Photograph of Timothy Onwuatuegwu, Sandhurst-educated Army Officer of Nigeria and later of Biafra

Timothy Onwuatuegwu in photograph taken some time after his appointment as second in command of the Biafran Western Front in October 1968. Photo credit: David Robison.

Sandhurst-educated Timothy Onwuatuegwu (d.1970) was a key participant in the bloody army coup of January 15th, 1966, and became a prominent commander on the Biafran side during the Nigerian Civil War.

As head of the 'S Division', he was viewed as one of the most effective field commanders of the Biafran Army.

A Nigerian Army major at the time of the coup of January 1966 and later a lieutenant colonel in the Biafran army, Onwuatuegwu's presumed death is still something of a mystery.

These are the following narratives:

. Onwuatuegwu was killed in an ambush conducted on the Cameroon border by Nigerian army soldiers of Northern origin as payback for the murder of the Sardauna of Sokoto as well as senior Northern military officers.

.  Onwuatuegwu was killed by Yoruba officers of the Nigerian army who lured him to a hotel in Owerri at the end of the war, this as revenge for the murders respectively of Brigadier Samuel Ademulegun and his wife, as well as that of Colonel Ralph Shodeinde.

. Onwuatuegwu was killed by Brigadier Hassan Katsina in Kirikiri Prison, Lagos. Katsina is supposed to have flown from Kaduna to put a bullet in Onwuatuegwu's forehead. A slightly different narrative puts the location of his execution as Enugu prison.

Onwuatuegwu was supposedly shot with two other captured Biafran army officers and had been betrayed by certain civilians from Nnewi, the home town of the Head of State of the secessionist state of Biafra.

In his memoir The Fall of Biafra, Ben Gbulie claimed that Onwuatuegwu's betrayers were part of a wider "Osu conspiracy" of sabotage which “caused" Biafra's eventual defeat. The Osu are the “untouchable” caste of Igbo society.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2024).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.