Militaryסילביה רפאל

Sylvia Rafael

Sylvia Rafael was a South African-born Mossad agent who was convicted in Norway for her role in the 1973 Lillehammer affair.

1937 to 2005Mossad agentOperation Wrath of GodThe Lillehammer affair

Born: 1 April 1937, Cape Town
Died: 10 February 2005, Pretoria
Occupation: spy

Sylvia Rafael was born in 1937 in Cape Town

Rafael was born in Graaff-Reinet, South Africa, to a Jewish father and a Christian mother. She was raised as a Christian, but came to see herself as Jewish.

In 1963 she moved to Israel after witnessing an antisemitic incident in South Africa. She volunteered at Kibbutz Gan Shmuel, learned Hebrew and worked briefly as an English teacher in Tel Aviv. There Mossad recruited her.

She worked under cover as a Canadian photojournalist named Patricia Roxborough, based in Paris. After the 1972 Munich massacre she took part in Operation Wrath of God, mainly gathering intelligence. On 21 July 1973 the team killed waiter Ahmed Bouchiki in Lillehammer, Norway, mistaking him for Ali Hassan Salameh.

She was arrested and convicted in 1974, and sentenced to five and a half years in prison. She was released early and married her Norwegian lawyer, Annæus Schjødt. She was deported from Norway in 1977 and later returned to live there.

In 1992 she settled again in South Africa, where she died in February 2005. She was buried at Kibbutz Ramat HaKovesh.