Rafi Eitan, a renowned and controversial Israeli spymaster who masterminded the capture of Adolf Eichmann, one of the key architects of the Holocaust, has died aged 92.

The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu called him a “hero of the Israeli intelligence services”.

The Mossad director, Yossi Cohen, said the majority of Eitan’s exploits still remain unknown to the public. “His work and his actions will be etched in gold letters in the annals of the state,” Cohen said in a statement on Saturday. “The foundations that Rafi laid in the first years of the state are a significant layer in the activities of the Mossad even today.”

Eitan was the operational head of the mission to capture Eichmann in Argentina and bring him to trial in Jerusalem. Having identified that Eichmann was still alive after the second world war and living in Argentina, Eitan’s team kidnapped him in May 1960 and smuggled him back to Israel where he was tried and found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity for organising the extermination of millions of Jews. He was hanged in 1962.

Eitan had joined the Jewish paramilitary group Haganah from the age of 12 and participated in many attacks against British forces during the Palestine mandate. During one such attack he earned the nickname “Rafi stinker” after crawling through sewers to deliver a bomb that blew up a British radar station tracking boats bringing Jewish immigrants from Europe to Palestine in defiance of British edicts.

He later studied economics at the London School of Economics. He went on serve in a series of high-ranking posts in Israeli intelligence and was the Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin’s personal terrorism adviser. Other espionage actions he is said to have organised include the attack on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981.

Eitan also oversaw a spying operation against the United States during which he recruited the naval intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard to steal US top-secret material. Pollard was later jailed for life and the operation publicly embarrassed Israel and damaged its relations with Washington. Eitan, who insisted his actions were fully sanctioned by his superiors, took responsibility for the fiasco and had to resign. It is claimed he acted as consultant to MI6 and the British government in dealing with counterterrorism in Northern Ireland.

Out of public office he enjoyed a successful career as a businessman. Later in life Eitan entered politics and was elected a member of the Knesset. He served as the pensions minister but lost his seat in 2009.