How Mossad Used a Damascus Café Owner to Mark Syrian Officers for 10 Years

Описание: Café Al-Nawfara owner Boutros Hanna, serving Syrian military intelligence officers who frequent his Old City establishment near the citadel for morning coffee and backgammon games, is recruited by Mossad after they threaten to expose his Christian brother's work with Israeli intelligence—offering $200,000 over the operation and family protection. For 10 years during Syria's Soviet alliance peak, Hanna photographs customers using cameras hidden in decorative brass coffee urns, records conversations through table microphones embedded in backgammon boards, and maintains detailed customer logs coded as "coffee preferences." He identifies 91 Syrian and Palestinian intelligence officers, documents their operational discussions, and transmits intelligence through coded supply orders to a Mossad front company in Cyprus. His intelligence enables Israel to map Syria's entire intelligence structure, intercept multiple operations, and target twelve officers in separate eliminations—Hanna extracting to Brazil in 1993 with his payment as Syria's civil intelligence purges begin, Damascus authorities never discovering their most beloved café owner spent a decade marking every spy who played backgammon over his Turkish coffee.

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