In July 1973 a young Moroccan waiter was walking home from the cinema with his pregnant wife in the tranquil Norwegian resort of Lillehammer when he was shot dead by an armed gang. Ahmed Bouchiki had been mistaken by agents of the Israeli secret service, Mossad, for Ali Hassan Salameh, whom they believed to have been a key figure in Black September, the extremist Palestinian faction blamed for the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics the previous year.
Five of the Mossad agents were convicted and jailed in Norway shortly after the killing took place. But their leader, Mike Harari, who has died aged 87, got away. Back in Jerusalem, Harari offered his resignation to the Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir, but it was turned down because, she told him, he "still had much work to do". Nonetheless, Harari's dreadful error tarnished the career of a man referred to by some as "the Zionist James Bond" and probably prevented him reaching the top of an organisation that many Israelis regard as one of the pillars of the Jewish state.
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