When the Israeli intelligence service (Mossad) published last month, a book that partly deals with the October 1973 War, it included two documents related to the meeting of Ashraf Marwan, the son-in-law of the late Egyptian President, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and the information secretary of his predecessor, President Anwar Sadat, with the head of the Mossad.
“The Angel,” “Babylon” and most frequently “the In-Law,” are code names that were given for “the spy”, who leaked to the Israelis the date of the Egyptian attack.
Marwan’s name gradually emerged over the years through memoirs by Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Golda Meir (1969-1974), Chief of Military Intelligence Eli Zaira (1972-1974), and Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan (1967- 1974).
However, the Mossad book presented for the first time a document that states that the Israeli intelligence body refuses to consider Marwan a “double agent,” and rejects Egypt’s description of him as a “national hero, who succeeded in conveying the most important information about the Israeli enemy.”
For the Mossad, Marwan was loyal to Israel.
In the face of the Israeli narratives, Egypt maintained an official silence. However, a well-informed Egyptian source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Asharq Al-Awsat that ongoing Israeli discussions about the spy “reflect competition between the security services in Israel,” stressing that everyone in Tel Avivi is “trying to justify themselves by attempting to appear as heroes.”
Dr. Tariq Fahmy, professor of political science and specialist in Israeli affairs, said that the “recycling of the Israeli narrative,” whether regarding the October War or Marwan, represents “an embodiment of the military and intelligence failure in Israel.”
Major General Nasr Salem, former head of the Egyptian Army’s reconnaissance service and professor of strategic sciences at the Military Academy for Postgraduate Studies, said that Marwan is “an Egyptian hero who participated in implementing the strategic deception plan through which Egypt preempted the war.”
He also considered that he “participated in removing the head of the Israeli Mossad from the operations management team in Tel Aviv, hours before the outbreak of the war.”
The British Court of Public Inquiry ruled in July 2010 that Marwan died of an “unknown cause,” and that evidence provided by the police and witness testimonies “do not support any hypothesis regarding his death.”
The investigations did not accuse any party of being behind Marwan’s death on Wednesday, June 27, 2007, when he fell to his death from the balcony of his house in an upscale neighborhood in London, at the age of 63.
His wife, Mona Gamal Abdel Nasser, accused the Israeli Mossad of assassinating him.
The scene of Marwan’s funeral increased the mystery surrounding him, as it was arranged by official agencies, in the presence of senior statesmen, led by Gamal Mubarak, the son of the Egyptian president at the time.
