by way of Cyprus in mid-May 1951, and later directly to Israel in a gi-
ant airlift operated directly from Baghdad to Lod airport near Tel Aviv.
See also BARNETT, RONALD; BEN-PORAT, MORDECHAI.– F –
FAILED BERN ACTION.Shortly after 2:00 A.M. on the morning of
19 February 1998, Mossadagents were caught red-handed while try-
ing to plant listening devices in an apartment in Bern, Switzerland. A
resident called the police to complain of unusual movements in the
apartment block. At 2:20 A.M. the Swiss police arrived and arrested
Ben Tal, Dan Shifrin, and Sheli Rivlin (two men and a woman, re-
spectively). All of them presented Israeli passports. The police found
that Tal was holding a diplomatic bag that was not fully sealed. In-
side were listening devices.
As the police checked the detainees in the entrance to the building,
a commotion was heard in the street nearby. A certain Daniela Tefler
and her “boyfriend” Ron Meltzer were sitting in a parked car. Tefler
shouted, “Heart attack! Call an ambulance!” The event was intended
as a diversionary tactic, but the police did not let go of the detainees.
They were taken for interrogation.
It was learned that Tal had already penetrated the building a month
earlier for a similar purpose. His mission was to monitor the tele-
phone in the apartment belonging to Abdulla Al-Zayn, a key figure in
the Hizbullah movement in Europe. The device worked on the prin-
ciple of conveying his intercepted calls to another telephone through
a cellular phone of a Swiss mobile phone company.
The Swiss authorities downplayed the incident. Only Tal remained
in custody. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to do
his best to secure his release. Switzerland had very close military re-
lations with Israel and was considered a major consumer of Israeli
military products; the incident might have caused diplomatic embar-
rassment. This debacle, following the 1997 Khaled Mash’al Fiasco,
led to the resignation of the director of the Mossad, Danny Yatom.
After two months in custody, Tal was released on bail of three mil-
lion Swiss francs on condition that he would return to Switzerland for
the trial. The Israeli government deposited the bail. On 7 July 2000FAILED BERN ACTION•9106-102 (02) A-G.qxd 3/24/06 7:23 AM Page 91