'It's OK to kidnap Ahmadinejad'
2008-09-09 21:01
Jerusalem - Israeli Cabinet Minister Rafi Eitan, a onetime spy involved in the operation to kidnap Nazi mastermind Adolf Eichmann and bring him to trial, thinks the same tactic could be used in the case of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Ahmadinejad is feared and reviled in Israel because of his repeated calls to wipe the Jewish state off the map and his pursuit of nuclear technology.
Iran says its nuclear programme is to generate power, but Israel and much of the international community fears Iran is building an atomic bomb.
"A man like Ahmadinejad who threatens genocide has to be brought for trial in The Hague," seat of the international war crimes tribunal, Eitan said in an interview on Tuesday. "And all options are open in terms of how he should be brought."
Asked if kidnapping was acceptable, Eitan replied, "Yes. Any way to bring him for trial in The Hague is a possibility."
Eitan, a member of Israel's inner Cabinet of ministers with security responsibilities, said he was expressing his own opinion and nothing more. In Israel's rough-and-tumble parliamentary system, ministers often speak out without the blessings of the country's top leadership, and it's highly unlikely Israel would seek to nab Ahmadinejad.
Eitan, 81, was one of the Mossad agents who kidnapped Eichmann from Argentina in 1960 and brought him to Israel, where he was tried and executed for carrying out Adolf Hitler's "final solution" to kill European Jewry.
Eitan later headed a shadowy Defence Ministry unit that recruited Jonathan Pollard, a Jewish-American naval analyst who was caught spying for Israel in 1985 and sentenced to life in prison. The affair was one of the most damaging episodes in Israel-US relations.
Eitan made headlines last week when he revealed that the Israeli team that caught Eichmann also had notorious death camp doctor Joseph Mengele in their sights, but let him get away because they feared trying to capture him could have botched the Eichmann operation.
- AP