CovertCouncil

Operations

OPERATION FILE · September 1972 – 22 January 1979

Operation Wrath of God

After the 1972 Munich massacre, Israel's government authorized the killing of Palestinians it held responsible. Only one episode reached a courtroom: the 1973 murder of an innocent waiter in Lillehammer, Norway.

Declassified 2000

3 min read · 8 sources, 1 primary

Operation Wrath of God
Zvi Zamir, director of the Mossad from 1968 to 1974, in the early 1960s. IDF Spokesperson's Unit photographer. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

On the evening of 21 July 1973 Ahmed Bouchikhi, a Moroccan who worked as a waiter in Lillehammer, Norway, walked home from the cinema with his pregnant wife. Two men got out of a car and shot him repeatedly with .22 pistols. He died in the street. The town had not had a murder in decades6,8.

The gunmen thought they had killed Ali Hassan Salameh, a senior figure in the Palestinian group Black September. They had the wrong man. In the words of a Lillehammer police investigator, it was the first time people with apparent connections to the Mossad had been arrested abroad and brought before a court1,8,6.

Munich and the decision

On 5–6 September 1972 Black September gunmen took Israeli Olympic team members hostage in Munich; eleven Israelis were killed. Prime Minister Golda Meir's government responded with air strikes on Palestinian bases and, according to Israeli and foreign accounts, with a decision to kill people it held responsible for Munich and for other attacks. A small group of ministers and officials, often called Committee X, is said to have approved the targets; the Mossad director, Zvi Zamir, and Meir's counterterrorism adviser, Aharon Yariv, directed the effort7,4.

Israel has never published an official account of the campaign. In 1993 Yariv said on Israeli television that the Mossad had been behind the Lillehammer killing, which the Associated Press described as the first public Israeli admission6.

The killings attributed to Israel

From October 1972 a series of Palestinians were killed in Europe. The cases most often attributed to the Mossad are these7:

  • Wael Zwaiter, the PLO's representative in Rome, shot at his apartment building on 16 October 1972.
  • Mahmoud Hamshari, the PLO representative in Paris, fatally wounded by a bomb in his telephone on 8 December 1972.
  • Hussein al-Bashir, Fatah's representative in Cyprus, killed by a bomb in his Nicosia hotel room on 24 January 1973.
  • Mohammad Boudia, said by Israel to run Black September operations in France, killed by a car bomb in Paris on 28 June 1973.

In April 1973 Israeli commandos also raided Beirut and killed three senior PLO figures in their homes7.

Lillehammer

In July 1973 a team was sent to Norway on a report that Salameh was there. Team members followed a Palestinian contact in Lillehammer, saw him talking with Bouchikhi, and concluded that Bouchikhi was Salameh. After the shooting most of the team left the country. Two members were arrested the next day when they used the same rental car to get to the airport; the police then found the others at a flat in Oslo8,4,6,2.

Six people went on trial in January 1974. The prosecutor told the court they were members of "an official Israeli counter-terrorist group" and that some may have taken part in similar killings in Rome and Paris2. Five were convicted and one was acquitted; the longest sentence was five and a half years. All five were released and returned to Israel within about two years4,8,1.

The arrests did lasting damage. A key found on one prisoner led French police to an Israeli safe house in Paris and from there to others. The Mossad had to recall exposed officers, abandon safe houses and change its methods in Europe8,4. A secret CIA survey of Israeli intelligence, written in 1979, still used the Lillehammer arrests as its example of a Mossad operation in Europe5.

According to most accounts Meir suspended the operation after Lillehammer7.

Salameh and after

Salameh was killed in Beirut on 22 January 1979 when a car bomb exploded as his vehicle passed; the blast also killed bystanders, among them a British student and a German nun. The killing is generally attributed to Israel7.

In January 1996 Israel paid compensation to Bouchikhi's family without admitting responsibility. Norway reopened the case in 1990 and issued an international warrant in 1998 for the team leader, Michael Harari, but closed it the following year1,8.

In March 2000 a Norwegian government commission reported that it had found no evidence that Norwegian police or intelligence had helped the Israelis. Its chairman said even the 1974 court judgment had been classified secret until the commission had it released1,3.

Checking the record

Dates and outcome compared in two independent sources: they agree.

Other
Killing in Lillehammer on 21 July 1973; public trial of six team members; five released within 22 months. Five convicted of the killing, one acquitted; sentences from two to five and a half years.
Wikipedia
Killing on 21 July 1973; convicted agents released and returned to Israel in 1975. Six arrested, five convicted of complicity, sentences from one to five and a half years.

The sources agree on the date, the arrests and the convictions. They differ on the shortest sentence (one year in Wikipedia, two in the Marine Corps study, which relies on secondary accounts); this page gives only the upper figure. The Marine Corps study's account of the wider campaign draws heavily on the disputed book Vengeance and is used here only for the Lillehammer case.

Sources

  1. Other Mossad acted alone in 1973 killing, says Norway, The Guardian (AP) (2000-03-02).
  2. Other 6 in Boushicki murder trial accused of being Mossad agents, Jewish Telegraphic Agency (1974-01-08).
  3. Other NOU 2000: 6 Lillehammer-saken: Omstendigheter rundt drapet på Ahmed Bouchikhi den 21. juli 1973, Norwegian Ministry of Justice (Norges offentlige utredninger) (2000).
  4. Other Countering Terrorism: The Israeli Response to the 1972 Munich Olympic Massacre and the Development of Independent Covert Action Teams (Alexander B. Calahan), US Marine Corps Command and Staff College (via Federation of American Scientists) (1995-04).
  5. CIA Israel: Foreign Intelligence and Security Services (March 1979), Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Operations, Counterintelligence Staff (via National Security Archive) (1979-03).
  6. Other Lillehammer was site of bungled '73 assassination, Deseret News (Associated Press) (1994-02-09).
  7. Wikipedia Mossad assassinations following the Munich massacre, Wikipedia.
  8. Wikipedia Lillehammer affair, Wikipedia.
  9. Wikipedia English Wikipedia article (used for cross-checking).

Elsewhere in the files

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