Behind Ocalan’s Capture: Deceit, Abduction — and the Mossad?

Bloodshed at Israel’s Berlin consulate has highlighted speculation over whether israel’s intelligence service, the Mossad, helped catch Abdullah Ocalan. Even if Israel had no hand in Turkey’s capture of the rebel Kurd, his followers are now acting on that speculation. The Berlin drama followed reports on German television — attributed to unnamed “Western intelligence sources” — that Israeli intelligence may have played a role in snagging Ocalan.

The Israeli government late Tuesday strongly denied any involvement. “It was strange to see them actually issuing a denial on the basis of speculative reports,” says TIME Jerusalem bureau chief Lisa Beyer. “But it was clearly a good idea given what happened in Berlin.” Turkey on Wednesday boasted that its commandos had netted Ocalan in an “undercover operation,” loaded him blindfolded onto a private jet and flown him to an island prison off Turkey. The claim of a covert operation certainly bears up in light of the conflicting accounts, by Greece and Kenya, of Ocalan’s capture. Greece says it had given Ocalan temporary refuge at its diplomatic compound in Kenya, hoping to secure him sanctuary in a neighboring African country. Greek foreign minister Theodoros Pangalos said Tuesday Ocalan was “tricked into handing himself over” to Kenyan authorities on Monday, and had left the embassy compound with Kenyan officials. “He chose, despite our advice, to go with the Kenyan authorities to the airport,” Pangalos said, ostensibly to fly to Amsterdam. Greece believes he was captured by the Turks en route.

The Kenyans were furious at the insinuation that they’d sold out Ocalan, especially since they are wary of being drawn into any international conflict after last year’s devastating bomb attack on the U.S. embassy in Nairobi. Dr. Bonaya Godana, Kenya’s foreign minister, said his government didn’t know Ocalan was even in the country and ordered his removal as soon as it found out. Insisting that Kenyan security personnel would not have violated the diplomatic immunity of the compound, Dr. Godana claimed the Greeks had escorted Ocalan to the airport and flown him out of the country.

The discrepancy between those two accounts leaves ample room for a covert operation. Eyewitness accounts cited by Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper, the Associated Press and Ocalan’s German attorneys suggest that Ocalan was lured or dragged out of the embassy compound by men who were — or were at least believed to be — Kenyan security officials.

The speculation over Ocalan’s capture is not so much over whether there was a covert operation, but over who may have been involved. Greece on Tuesday hinted that Washington may have helped the Turks find Ocalan. The U.S. had certainly supported Turkey’s efforts to extradite the fugitive and charge him with terrorism — and Turkey’s growing unhappiness about being used as a base for operations against Iraq would give Washington an incentive to help out. While White House spokesman Joe Lockhart on Tuesday welcomed news of the Kurd rebel’s capture, he denied the U.S. had any “direct involvement in Ocalan’s handover to Turkey.” Circumstantial evidence also fueled speculation over Mossad’s involvement. “Even if the Israelis were not involved, Ocalan’s capture certainly carried some of the hallmarks of a Mossad operation,” says TIME correspondent William Dowell. “There’s been strong security cooperation between Israel and Turkey, and the Mossad certainly has a well-established capacity to undertake such complex missions in faraway countries.”

Israel also has a close relationship with the Kenyan authorities, and a history of operating in the region. Kenya was used as a staging ground for Israel’s spectacular 1977 rescue of hijack hostages at Uganda’s Entebbe airport, and later also for its emergency airlift of Ethiopian Jews. Israeli personnel took charge of rescue operations in Nairobi following the U.S. embassy bombing last July.

All these connections, of course, remain circumstantial. It is in the nature of covert operations that they’re seldom reported unless they go wrong, or if those responsible want to gloat. Right now only the Turks are gloating. And judging by the frenzy of protests across Europe, if anyone else helped out, they’d be well advised to keep that fact to themselves.