Rafi Eitan, the spy who captured Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, is dead

The head of "the final operation", the spy Rafi Eitan, has remembered the capture of Adolf Eichmann, who died Saturday at the age of 92, according to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"My wife Sarah and I, with all the Jewish people, We regret the death of our beloved Rafi Eitan, one of the heroes of the intelligence service of the State of Israel. in countless acts for security, "said the Prime Minister.

Eitan was the spy He led the team in 1960 to stop Eichmann in Argentina. At that time, he was head of the Joint Operations Unit of the Israeli secret service. Eitan chose seven agents to carry out the "last operation", a name that Mossad gave the plan to bring to the dock one of the architects of the Holocaust.

Eichmann was a lieutenant-colonel of Adolf Hitler's protection squadron, in German Schutzstaffel, better known as SS. As such, organized the transport of millions of Jews from ghettos to concentration camps and extermination.

Once Eitan and his agents managed to kidnap Eichmann in San Fernando, a city in Buenos Aires where he had been hiding under the pseudonymous name of Ricardo Klement, he was secretly out of the country. Argentina and entered Israel.

In Jerusalem, the Tribunal, composed of Judges Moshe Landau, Benjamin Halevy and Yitzhak Raveh, sentenced to death. His lawyer, Robert Servatius, could not help it. In his last words, the Nazi war criminal declared that everything he did was responding to obedience due to his superiors. After being convicted of genocide, Eichmann died on June 1, 1962 at the gallows.

Eitan was born in 1926 in Ein Harud, a kibbutz in northern Israel, within a family of Russian Jewish immigrants. Entering the age of majority, he entered the Jewish militia of Palmaj where he participated in many missions, including the one known as the "night of the bridges", to destroy eleven bridges connecting Palestine under British mandate to neighboring Arab countries, Haaretz reported.

After working in the field of espionage agencies, Eitan spent a few years in the private sector, then returned to work in the security sector, holding various positions as an advisor or executive in state-owned companies. , as well as forming the GIL political party, with whom became Minister of Retiree Affairs between 2006 and 2009. The Israeli Prime Minister recalled Eitan Saturday as being a "hero" of Israel.