The member of the Togolese diaspora Ben Djagba, has issued an open letter to Israeli, American, and United Nations authorities, alleging a long-standing security partnership between Israel and the Togolese government. The letter claims this cooperation—particularly in surveillance and security training—has contributed to the persistence of the current regime.
Citing international reports and investigations, the author highlights the alleged use of surveillance technologies against journalists, opposition figures, and religious leaders. The letter calls for a review of security agreements, greater transparency, and stronger international oversight.
The full text of the letter appears below.
OPEN LETTER TO THE ISRAELI AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES
Salt Lake City, Utah, April 20, 2026
To: The Attention of:
President Isaac Herzog (Israel)
President Donald J. Trump (United States) & Vice President JD Vance
The US Ambassy in Lome, Togo
The United Nations Secretary-General
Your Excellencies,
We write to you on behalf of the Togolese people, —who have lived under a single dynasty for more than sixty years, and who have recently uncovered, with evidence that cannot be dismissed, the full structure of the system used against Togolese.
This letter is not born of rumor. It is born from declassified Israeli diplomatic cables, United Nations Security Council reports, Citizen Lab research from the University of Toronto, Amnesty International findings, and judicial proceedings before Israeli courts. It is born, above all, from the published investigative series Les Gardiens du Trône by Farida Bemba Nabourema, which has brought these sources together into a coherent and damning account.
WE ADDRESS THE ISRAELI AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES:
Your Excellency, the State of Israel has, since 1967, maintained a relationship with the Gnassingbé dynasty in Togo that goes far beyond ordinary diplomatic cooperation. The documented facts are as follows:
Mer Group, an Israeli holding company led by veterans of the Mossad, the Shin Bet, and Unit 8200820, holds a contract worth 20 million euros per year with Togo’s National Intelligence Agency (ANR), — an agency credibly documented to practice torture and to systematically infiltrate civil society organizations, religious institutions, and opposition movements.
Hagai Peleg, former commander of the YAMAM elite counterterrorism unit, has, through his company ASI, deployed private contractors to train Togolese military and intelligence personnel in techniques developed induring the context of the military occupation of Palestinian territories.
The NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, — classified as a weapon by the Israeli government, and exportable only with explicit Ministry of Defense approval, — has been deployed against Togolese journalists, opposition figures, and members of the clergy, including Bishop Benoît Alowonou in what the Citizen Lab described this as the first documented case of Pegasus being used against a member of the clergy anywhere in the world.
Former Shin Bet Director Yoram Cohen has personally met with President Faure Gnassingbé in Lomé.
In exchange for this protection apparatus, the Togolese government votes systematically with Israel in every international forum. In December 2017, Togo was the only African nation among the nine states that voted against the UN resolution condemning the American recognition of Jerusalem, — standing alongside Israel, the United States, and a collectionhandful of Pacific micro-states. The Togolese Foreign Minister declared publicly at the AIPAC convention in Washington that this support was total and unwavering.
The cost of this arrangement is borne entirely by the Togolese people. A country where 85% of the population lives below the poverty line spends 20 million euros per year on Israeli surveillance contractors. Children study in overcrowded classrooms while combat drones take off from Niamtougou and key-cities. Hospitals remain under-equipped while veterans of Israeli intelligence equip the agency that surveils, infiltrates, and silences those who dare to speak.
WE ADDRESS PRESIDENT ISAAC HERZOG OF ISRAEL:
Mr. President, Israel was founded on the memory of what it means to be a people surveilled, persecuted, and silenced by a state that has placed its own survival above the lives of those it claims to govern. We ask you today: how can the State of Israel sell to a government the tools to do to its own citizens what was once done to yours?
The Gnassingbé dynasty came to power through the assassination of President Sylvanus Olympio on the night of January 12–13, 1963, — a democratically elected leader who refused to subordinate his nation to foreign interests, who wanted a Togo that answered only to its own citizens. That murder opened a door. Israel walked through it.
We do not ask Israel to abandon its strategic interests. We ask Israel to recognize that a 60-year relationship with a dynasty that came to power through political murder, that has tortured its opponents, that has spied on its bishops, and that has used Israeli technology to survive every wave of popular demand for democracy, — that such a relationship is a stain on the values Israel claims to uphold.
We call on President Herzog to use his moral authority to initiate a formal review of all security cooperation contracts between Israeli companies and the government of Togo, to suspend all export licenses for surveillance technology to Lomé pending that review, and to receive a delegation of Togolese civil society representatives, those, both locally and from the Diaspora.
WE ADDRESS PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP AND VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE:
Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, — your administration has spoken strongly about the importance of freedom, sovereignty, and the right of peoples to determine their own future. These values are not abstractions to the Togolese people. They are demands written in blood across six decades.
For many young people in Togo, leaving the country isn’t just a dream anymore — it’s become something closer to a plan. With no jobs, no prospects, and a future that is tone-molded, thousands of young men and women have turned their eyes outward, toward the United States most of all, convinced that somewhere across that distance, life could actually work out. And that conviction runs deep enough that some of them are willing to bet everything on it — crossing brutal stretches of ocean, taking routes that have swallowed other people whole — all for a chance, however slim, at something better.
The United States has long-standing leverage in this situation. The State Department has already held meetings with Togolese authorities regarding the country’s maritime registry, which has been used to circumvent UN sanctions against North Korea, — a direct national security concern for the United States. This leverage exists and should be used.
We call on the Trump administration to formally raise with the Israeli government the issue of security technology exports to Togo; to condition any deepening of U.S.-Israel security cooperation on meaningful reforms to Israel’s arms and surveillance export review process; to support Togolese civil society organizations and journalists in exile who have been targeted by Israeli spyware; and to use American influence within ECOWAS to support a transition toward genuine democracy in Togo.
The Togolese people do not ask for American intervention. They ask for American consistency: that the values your administration defends at home and in its foreign policy be applied to a small West African nation whose people have been fighting for those same values since 1963. What is good for the goose is good for the gander, as the saying.
WE ADDRESS THE UNITED NATIONS:
The United Nations has already named the Togolese government in connection with violations of sanctions against UNITA in Angola (the Fowler Report, S/2000200/203) and against North Korea (ISIS Report 2019/2020202). The UN Human Rights mechanisms have documented repression in Togo across multiple cycles. The Citizen Lab, a research institution whose findings are routinely cited in UN proceedings, has documented the use of NSO Group’s Pegasus, — an Israeli state-approved weapon, — against Togolese civil society.
We call on the United Nations Secretary-General to mandate a special inquiry into the use of foreign surveillance technology against civil society in Togo; to place the Israel-Togo security relationship on the agenda of the Human Rights Council; to support the enforcement of existing recommendations against Togo regarding freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly; and to ensure that the documented victims of Pegasus surveillance in Togo, — the journalists, the activists, the bishop, — have access to international legal remedies.
A FINAL WORD:
Sylvanus Olympio was killed because he wanted a Togo that would be self-reliant owed — minimum debts to foreign powers. For sixty-three years, the people he once led have fought, with extraordinary courage and at enormous cost, to reclaim what was taken from them on that misfortunate night of his killing.
They have not failed because they lacked determination. They have not yet succeeded because they were fighting, without always realizing it, against a system built in Tel Aviv, assembled in Lomé, and financed by their own resources.
Now they know.
We, Togolese, call on you, — each of you, in your respective capacities, — to stop protecting the dynastic dictatorship in Togo. To stop approving the weapons that silence bishops. To stop looking away from the surveillance contracts that transform turn the phones of journalists into instruments of their own persecution.
The liberation of Togo is a Togolese project. But the dismantling of the foreign architecture that sustains its oppression requires the courage of those who built artifice to acknowledge what they have done — and to stop.
Respectfully and urgently,
Ben Djagba.
