Sylvia Rafael

Sylvia Raphael
Sylvia Raphael's grave in the Ramat HaKovesh cemetery
Born	(1937-04-01)1 April 1937 Cape Town, South Africa
Died	9 February 2005(2005-02-09) (aged 67) Pretoria, South Africa
Criminal charge	Murder, espionage, use of forged documents
Criminal penalty	5.5 years in prison
Criminal status	Released and deported from Norway in 1975

Sylvia Raphael Schjødt (born 1 April 1937 — 9 February 2005) was a South African-born Israeli Mossad agent, convicted of murder in Norway for her involvement in the Lillehammer affair.

Sylvia Raphael was born on 1 April 1937, near Cape Town, South Africa. Raphael, whose father was a Jewish atheist and mother was Christian, was raised in her mother's religion. Having witnessed an antisemitic incident in her native country as a child, however, she immigrated to Israel in 1963. She initially lived on a kibbutz, and later worked as a teacher before moving to Tel Aviv, where she was recruited by Mossad. After training she attained the rank of “combatant,” the highest rank for a Mossad agent. This ranking qualified Raphael to operate in foreign countries, and she was sent to Paris in the guise of a freelance journalist with a Canadian passport in the name of real-life Canadian photojournalist Patricia Roxborough. When the Israeli government decided to track down the Black September operatives who committed the Munich massacre in Munich, West Germany in 1972, Raphael provided valuable intelligence which led to the killing of three, before being assigned to an Operation Wrath of God team.

Raphael was part of a group of Mossad agents who mistakenly assassinated Morocco-born waiter Ahmed Bouchiki (brother of Chico Bouchikhi) in Lillehammer, Norway on 21 July 1973, which became known as the Lillehammer affair. The agents claimed to have mistaken Bouchiki for Ali Hassan Salameh, the chief organizer for Black September who had planned the Munich massacre.