Turkey's National Intelligence Organization said it discovered a cell of 56 Mossad operatives, accused of spying on non-Turkish nationals for the Israeli state, and announced seven of the suspects were arrested, according to Daily Sabah.
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According to Turkish officials, there were a total of nine networks overseen by nine Mossad agents in Tel Aviv. Turkey's intelligence agency said the Israeli spies gathered biographical intelligence through online routing methods, vehicle tracking, and hacking protected networks.
The agents also allegedly physically followed various targets and filmed meetings. According to the Turkish authorities, this operation was "supervised by an Israeli of Arab origin, Suleiman Agbariya." The network included citizens of several Middle Eastern countries and used fake sites in several languages - particularly Arabic - to obtain locations and IP addresses.
Communications between Mossad agents in Turkey and abroad were exclusively carried out via cell phones assigned to individuals using false identities in countries including Spain, the UK, Sweden, Germany, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Belgium.
The network was headed by a Mossad agent named "Shirin Aliyan", whose real name remains unknown to the Turkish authorities. Through a German telephone line, he ordered a Palestinian "Khaled Nijim" to create several websites, specifically dedicated to targeting individuals.
Turkish intelligence also discovered that Mossad sent agents of Arab origin from Istanbul to Lebanon and Syria to gather information and identify targets for drone attacks. Other agents were deployed to Beirut to gather information on the Islamic State. They reportedly pinpointed the precise location of a building occupied by Hezbollah, as well as the identities of senior military and political leaders residing on the third floor of the same building.
This article was first published by i24NEWS.
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