Israel’s Mossad accused of hiding Assad-era Syrian general suspected of torture after serving as double agent

Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, Mossad, is implicated in a spectacular court case against the highest-ranking former Syrian army officer to be accused of war crimes during the Syrian Civil War in Europe to date.

According to criminal charges filed by Austrian prosecutors against former Syrian Brig.-Gen. Khaled al‑Halabi on Wednesday, the former intelligence officer served as an Israeli agent and was later hidden in Europe with the help of the Mossad.

Halabi, who is Druze and served the intelligence services of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, is accused of ordering and supervising the brutal torture of regime critics in the northern city of Raqqa during the Civil War, before fleeing the country in 2013.

After a decade-long manhunt by NGOs and former regime opponents, he was arrested in Austria in December 2024. Alongside Halabi, a former officer who worked with him, Lt.-Col. Musab Abu Rukbah was also charged.

Halabi joined the Syrian intelligence services in 2001, first working in counterintelligence. This is where he was recruited by an Israeli intelligence agency, possibly the IDF’s Unit 504, according to a report by The New Yorker.

In 2008, he was appointed as head of the State Security Branch 335, one of the Syrian intelligence services, in Raqqa, where he allegedly took an active role in violently oppressing regime opponents, including through torture.

The New York Times interviewed several former dissidents and protesters who said they had met Halabi in his office before being tortured.

Two years into the war, he fled to France, via Turkey and Jordan. According to The New Yorker, when Halabi did not receive asylum to stay in France, the Mossad entered the picture.

The Israeli intelligence agency allegedly requested that the Austrian domestic intelligence agency BVT, which has since been disbanded amid numerous scandals, assist in hiding Halabi in Vienna.

According to the prosecutors, the head of the BVT at the time traveled to Israel and agreed to the request in 2015.

Halabi was then allegedly accompanied and transported by Mossad agents, who drove him through Switzerland and Germany to Austria. Once there, the BVT helped Halabi get asylum and set him up in an apartment with money provided by the Mossad.

Austrian officials began searching for Halabi in 2016, after investigators from the NGO Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) presented their findings about him to officials of the Austrian Justice Ministry, who were not aware of the BVT’s activities.

Researchers from organizations Open Society and CIJA had tracked Halabi’s movements through open-source intelligence, finally locating him via a social‑media photo showing him on a Budapest bridge.

In 2021, Viennese prosecutors summoned Halabi to a hearing where he denied all accusations, claiming he did not allow detainees to be abused and to be unaware of sexual or other violence perpetrated against prisoners.

“Many of the accusations are based on anonymous witness testimony or are extremely contradictory,” his lawyer told the German magazine Der Spiegel. “My client neither committed torture nor did he order others to do so.”

In April 2023, four former BVT officials and a former asylum agency official were charged with abusing their office to arrange asylum for Halabi but were acquitted when the prosecution failed to prove that their actions harmed the interests of Austria.

Halabi’s trial is the first war‑crimes case against a former Syrian officer to be tried in Austria.

The extent of Halabi’s alleged activities for Israeli intelligence services, or the reasons for the Mossad allegedly helping him after his escape from Syria, are not known.

Ben Taub, author of a lengthy 2021 report in The New Yorker, speculated that “Halabi may not have known for some time that he was working for Israel; its spies routinely pose as foreigners from other countries, especially during operations in the Middle East.”

“Or perhaps he was given a narrow assignment regarding a shared interest. Halabi was disgusted by Iran’s growing influence over Syria, and has described Assad as an ‘Iranian puppet’ who is ‘not fit to govern a country.'”