Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan dies

Baku. 17 March. REPORT.AZ/ The former head of the Mossad, Meir Dagan died on Thursday at the age of 71 of an illness according to a press release by the Prime Minister's office. Report informs citing the foreign media. 

Dagan served as the Mossad chief from 2002-2011. A few years ago, Dagan underwent a liver transplant in Belarus and his health subsequently declined. He was born in 1945, reportedly in a train somewhere between Poland and Russia, to two Holocaust survivors.

Ariel Sharon appointed Dagan in October 2002, telling him, the story goes, that he wanted “a Mossad with a knife between its teeth.” 

Dagan is identified most with Israel's clandestine efforts to frustrate the Iranian nuclear program. 

During his tenure, the Mossad was credited with the assassination of five Iranian scientists, the destruction of Iranian equipment relating to its nuclear program, and the introduction of viruses into the computers that controlled Iran's nuclear centrifuges at the Natanz uranium enrichment site. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warmly eulogized Dagan as a “courageous fighter and commander who contributed greatly to Israel's security.”