Heba Selim

Heba Selim was an Egyptian woman who worked as a spy for the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad in the early 1970s. She was born in either Asyut or Cairo and studied French at Ain Shams University. She later moved to Paris to continue her studies at the Sorbonne, where she was recruited by the Mossad through a Jewish Polish friend. She married Farouk Al-Fikki, an Egyptian army engineer officer, and used him to gather information about the locations of anti-aircraft batteries and other military secrets. She passed this information to the Mossad, which helped them launch accurate strikes against the Egyptian forces during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Her spying activities were eventually discovered by the Egyptian intelligence, who lured her to Tripoli, Libya, under the pretext that her father was hospitalized there. She was arrested and transferred to Egypt, where she was tried and convicted of high treason along with her husband. They were both sentenced to death and executed by hanging on November 27, 1974. Heba Selim’s story was depicted in several movies and books, and remains a controversial figure in Egyptian history.