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Michael Harari, who has died aged 87, was a high-ranking intelligence officer in the Mossad and was known as “the Zionist James Bond”.

In 1970, Harari was appointed head of the Mossad’s special operations division, Caesarea, and established within it the Kidon (“Spear”) unit that specialised in assassinations. Two years later, Palestinian militants belonging to an organisation calling itself “Black September” killed 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. Subsequently, Golda Meir’s government instructed the Mossad to track down those responsible for the Munich terrorist attack and kill them one by one.

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A list of targets was compiled and Harari put together his assassination team, whose squad names were letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

It consisted of 15 agents, men and women, divided into five squads: “Aleph” was comprised of two assassins; “Bet” had two guards whose task was to shadow the Alephs; “Het” had two agents in charge of logistics; “Ayin” was made of between six and eight agents whose task was to shadow targets and establish escape routes for the Aleph and Bet squads; finally, under the letter “Kuf”, there were two agents specialising in communications.