Kenya and Israel had developed over the years a close “understanding” on intelligence matters. As part of Mossad’s “safari” in Central Africa it had exposed to the Kenyans the activities of other foreign spy networks. In return, Kenya continued to grant Mossad “special status,” allowing it to maintain a safe house in the city and providing ready access to Kenya’s small but efficient security service.
The Mossad team soon located Ocalan in the Greek embassy compound in Nairobi. From time to time Kurds—whom the team assumed were his bodyguards—came and went from the compound. Every night the head of the Mossad team reported to Tel Aviv. The order was the same: Watch—do nothing. Then the order dramatically changed. By “all means available,” Abdullah Ocalan was to be removed from the embassy compound and flown to Turkey.
The order was Halevy’s.
Luck played into the team’s hands. One of the Kurds came out of the embassy and drove to a bar close to the venerable Norfolk Hotel. In what is a classic Mossad tactic, one of the team “came alongside” the Kurd. With his dark skin and fluent Kurdish patois, the agent passed himself off as a Kurd working in Nairobi. He learned that Ocalan was getting restless. His latest application for political asylum in South Africa had received no response. Other African countries had been similarly loath to grant the Kurdish leader an entry visa.
Mossad’s eavesdropping team were using their equipment to monitor all communications in and out of the compound. It was clear that Greece would also refuse Ocalan sanctuary.
The Mossad agent who had met the Kurd in the bar made his move.
He telephoned the Kurd in the embassy compound and asked for “an urgent meeting.” Once more they met in the bar. The agent told the Kurd that Ocalan’s life was in danger if he remained in the compound. His only hope was to return to join his fellow Kurds, not in Turkey, but in northern Iraq. In its mountain vastness, Ocalan would be safe and could regroup for another day. The plan was something that Ocalan had actually begun to consider—and had been overheard doing so by the Mossad surveillance team. The agent persuaded the Kurd to return to the embassy and try and persuade Ocalan to come out and discuss the proposal.
Simply—and lethally—the trap was set. It was now only a matter of waiting to see how long Ocalan could hold but from taking the bait.
Based on its intercepts of radio traffic from the Greek Foreign Ministry to the compound, the Mossad team knew it was only a matter of days before Ocalan’s increasingly reluctant hosts would show him the door. In an “eyes only for ambassador” message, Greek prime minister Costas Simitis had said that Ocalan’s continued presence in the compound would trigger “a political and possibly military confrontation” in Greece.
Next morning a Falcon-900 executive jet landed at Nairobi’s Wilson Airport. The pilot said he had come to collect a group of businessmen flying to a conference in Athens.
What happened then is still a matter of intense debate. Ocalan’s German lawyer later claimed that “based on a misrepresentation of the situation by the Kenyan authorities,” Ocalan was “effectively dragged out of the compound.” But the Kenyan government and the Greek Embassy in Nairobi strongly denied the charge. The Greeks insisted that the Kurdish leader left the compound against the advice of his hosts.
One thing is certain.
The executive jet took off from Nairobi with Ocalan on board. As the aircraft cleared Kenyan air space the questions began:
Had the Mossad team followed its normal practice and injected Ocalan with an incapacitating drug as he stepped out of the compound? Had they snatched him off the street—as another team had snatched Adolf Eichmann all those years ago in Buenos Aires? Had Kenya turned a blind eye to an action that broke all international laws?
Hours after Ocalan had been incarcerated in a Turkish jail, an exultant Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit appeared on television to speak of an “intelligence triumph… a brilliant surveillance operation conducted in Nairobi over a twelve-day period.” He made no mention of Mossad. He was sticking to the rules.
For Efraim Halevy the success of the operation was measured against the loss of a spy network in Iraq that had depended so much on Kurdish support. He was not the first Mossad chief to wonder if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhyahu’s readiness to place Mossad in the role of “gun for hire” would have long-term repercussions in the wider business of intelligence gathering.
The success of the operation was undoubtedly muted by another fiasco that Halevy had inherited.
