Turkey arrests Kosovar man suspected of acting as ‘financier’ for Mossad
Since January, Turkish authorities have detained dozens suspected of collecting data for Israel as Ankara-Jerusalem relations continue to deteriorate
Turkish police arrested a suspect last week believed to have been transferring money to operatives of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, Turkish security sources said Tuesday.
According to the sources, MIT, the Turkish national intelligence agency, arrested Kosovar Liridin Rexhepi, who it claimed was a “financier for the Israeli intelligence.”
MIT alleged that Rexhepi managed Mossad’s financial network in Turkey, sending money to informants who “were filming with drones, conducting psychological warfare against Palestinian politicians and collecting information about the situation in Syria.”
The sources said that MIT started following Rexhepi when he entered Turkey on August 25 and that Istanbul’s Counterterrorism Police detained him on August 30.
Rexhepi admitted to making cash transfers to informants via Western Union and was sent to prison pending a court appearance, they said.
MIT claimed that Mossad has been sending money to its spies in Turkey from Eastern European countries, especially Kosovo. Some of the funds were transferred to informants in Syria.
They also used cryptocurrencies, according to the Turkish sources.
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, sparked by the terror group’s slaughter of 1,200 people and kidnapping of 251 in southern Israel on October 7, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been one of the strongest critics of the Jewish state. He has also praised the Hamas terror group as a liberation group.
In December, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency said that his organization was prepared to target Hamas anywhere, including in Lebanon, Turkey and Qatar.
Turkey warned Israel of “serious consequences” if it tries to hunt down members of the terror group living outside Palestinian territories, including in Turkey.
Since then, Turkish authorities have detained dozens of people, among them private investigators, on charges of collecting data on individuals, mostly Palestinians residing in Turkey, for Israeli intelligence.
In January, Turkey arrested 33 individuals suspected of spying for Israel, according to the country’s interior minister. The suspects were arrested in eight provinces across the country in what Ankara called Operation Mole.
Just a month later, in February, Turkish police arrested seven suspects on suspicion of selling information to Mossad through private detectives, the state-run Anadolu news agency said. Seven more people, including a private detective, were arrested in March — also for selling information to Mossad. Another two were arrested in April.
Israel has not commented on the arrests.
In May, Turkey halted all trade with Israel, and in August, it filed a request with a UN court to join South Africa’s lawsuit accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.
Erdogan has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, called for it to be punished in international courts and criticized Western nations for backing Israel. He has compared Israel to Nazi Germany, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Turkey and Israel normalized ties in 2022 by reappointing ambassadors following years of tensions. But those links quickly deteriorated after Hamas’s October 7 invasion.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
