Israel Defense Forces announced on Sunday that a Syrian spy working for Iran was captured in a daring commando raid in Syrian territory several months ago, publishing footage of his capture and the interrogation in Israel.
“During an operation initiated in the territory of Syria in recent months, the fighters of the Egoz unit together with the field investigators of Unit 504, under the command of the 210th Division and with intelligence guidance, arrested an Iranian terror infrastructure operative on the Syrian front,” the military stated.
“Ali Suleiman al-Aasi, a Syrian citizen living in the Saida region in southern Syria, was employed by Iran and engaged in gathering intelligence on IDF forces in the border area for future terror activity.”
Egoz is part of the 89th Commando Brigade, a small unit that specializes in reconnaissance raids and anti-guerilla warfare in the northern sector. Unit 504 is the IDF Intelligence branch’s human intelligence unit.
In a joint operation, the brigade infiltrated approximately 40 kilometers (26 miles) into Syrian territory, capturing al-Aasi, near the town of Saida in the Daraa prefecture. He had been under close surveillance by Israeli intelligence, and his arrest thwarted plans for a future attack, according to the IDF
The raid also revealed the operational methods of the Iranian terror infrastructure along Israel’s border with Syria in the Golan Heights.
Following his arrest, al-Aasi was transferred for interrogation to Israel, where Unit 504 continued to extract relevant information from him.
Footage taken during the arrest shows Israeli soldiers with drawn weapons entering a house at night and capturing al-Aasi.
In another short clip from his interrogation, al-Aasi explains how Iranian agents contacted him, one of whom apparently visited his home, selecting it because of the strategic location overlooking the border area.
According to al-Aasi, the agent told him to “just observe the border.”
“Then he told me he was from the [Syrian] military intelligence but actually, Iran is behind them. From what I understood, he was Iranian,” he continued. “This means, even if Iran doesn’t work out in the open, there is the cover from military intelligence.”
Al-Aasi said Iran was aiming to gather intelligence about the IDF’s movement along the border.
“Once we told him, there was a tank yesterday at this hour, a patrol that passed at this hour, ok, that’s part of what was said.”
The highly unusual announcement of a covert IDF commando operation in a foreign country comes one day after the IDF announced a similar secret capture operation last Friday in which a high-ranking Hezbollah commander was caught in northern Lebanon