Lillehammer affair

Six of 15 of the Mossad team were captured and convicted of complicity in the killing by the Norwegian justice system in a major blow to the intelligence agency's reputation.

Lillehammer was a relatively small city, and the sudden arrival of more than a dozen strangers attracted attention from residents.

[4][5][page needed] On the evening of 21 July, a day after having misidentified Bouchikhi as Salameh, the Mossad agents carried out the assassination.

While two stayed in the car to provide cover, the other two got out and shot Bouchikhi 13 times with a 22 caliber pistol, his wife witnessing the shooting.

Nine members of the hit team, including the two actual killers, escaped and had left Norway by the day following the assassination.

[5][page needed] As a result, Mossad agents who had been exposed had to be recalled, safe houses abandoned, phone numbers changed and operational methods modified.

[citation needed] For the first time, clear evidence had been found of Israel's involvement in the string of assassinations of Palestinians that had taken place on European soil as part of Operation Wrath of God.

That same month, an agreement was reached; Israel paid compensation equal to US$283,000 split between Bouchikhi's wife and daughter.

In 1998 it issued a global arrest warrant for the leader of the operation, Michael Harari, who had successfully escaped, but closed the case the following year after judging that it would be impossible to get a conviction.

[15] According to the September 2004 book release of Mange liv (English: Many lives) by the former lawyer Annæus Schjødt, who represented two of the agents in the case and later married one of them (Sylvia Raphael),[7] information about the Israeli nuclear weapons program[16] was leaked to the Government of Norway by one of the arrested agents, Dan Arbel.