A secret network of Western intelligence agencies assisted Israel in a campaign of assassinations against Palestinians, which took place in the early 1970s, a new report has revealed.
Encrypted cables from Swiss archives studied by Dr Aviva Guttmann, a historian of strategy and intelligence at Aberystwyth University, show that 18 Western states shared intelligence with Israel as it was targeting Palestinians across Europe.
The network, which shared the cables on a system codenamed Kilowatt, included the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Switzerland and West Germany.
Intelligence on safe houses, vehicles and persons of interest was shared on the network without the oversight or public approval of elected officials.
The Mossad assassination campaign, which saw at least ten Palestinians killed in Paris, Rome, Athens and Nicosia, among other places. The Israeli intelligence agency launched the killing spree after an attack by Palestinian militants at the 1972 Munich Olympics saw 11 Israeli athletes killed.
Western intelligence agencies continued to share the intelligence with Mossad even after it became clear that the agency was carrying out assassinations.
"A lot was very granular, linking individuals to specific attacks and giving details that would be of great help. Perhaps at the very beginning, [western officials] were unaware [of the killings] but afterwards there was a lot of press reporting and other evidence suggesting strongly what the Israelis were doing," Guttmann was quoted by The Guardian as saying.
"They were even sharing the results of their own investigations into the assassinations with the agency – Mossad – which was most likely to have done them."
Israel's first assassination linked to the operation was of Palestinian intellectual Wael Zwaiter, who was gunned down in Rome weeks after the Munich attack.
Zwaiter had worked at the Libyan embassy in the Italian capital, and his family and friends had long protested that he was not involved in militant activity. The cables studied by Guttmann reveal that Western intelligence agencies had accused Zwaiter of providing support for the group behind the Munich attack, the Black September Organization (BSO).
In Paris, Israeli agents killed Mahmoud al-Hamshari, the Palestinian Liberation Organization's official representative in France. Hamshari's name is also mentioned in the Kilowatt cables.
Mossad also appeared to use intelligence from the cables to track down and kill Mohamed Boudia, a veteran of the Algerian independence war who had used his expertise to assist the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PFLP] and the BSO.
The cables reveal that the British domestic intelligence agency MI5 provided Mossad with its only picture of BSO leader Ali Hassan Salameh. Using the British-supplied photo, Mossad believed it had located Salameh in the Norwegian ski resort of Lillehammer. It later turned out that a man gunned down by Mossad operatives at the resort was a Moroccan waiter.
Guttmann, who is publishing the findings of her research in a book later this year, says that the cables raise key questions about the secret sharing of intelligence, including in the present day as Israel wages war on Gaza.
"When it comes to intelligence-sharing between services of different states, oversight is very difficult. International relations of the secret state are completely off the radar of politicians, parliaments or the public. Even today, there will be a lot of information being shared about which we know absolutely nothing," Guttmann said.