Hezbollah has detained four of its own members on charges of spying for Israel
while a fifth has fled, the London-based daily
Asharq Alawsat reported this
weekend.
Quoting “well-informed Lebanese sources,” the paper said the
fifth operative had gone missing amid suspicions he too had collaborated with
Israel. The operative, named only as M.S., disappeared from his home in southern
Beirut last week. Little is known about him other than that he is said to have
testified in the
UN Special Tribunal on the assassination of former Lebanese
prime minister Rafik Hariri.
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Syria to air confession of 'Israeli spy' in Mughniyeh hit On Thursday, Hezbollah issued a statement
denying the detention reports as “baseless.”
In June,
Hezbollah held two
of its operatives on charges of collaborating with the CIA, and a third man
alleged to have worked with another foreign intelligence service.
Leaked
US diplomatic cables released last month by WikiLeaks revealed that Lebanon's
parliamentary speaker, seemingly a close Hezbollah ally, had actually hoped
Israel would deal a severe blow to the extremist group during the 2006 Second
Lebanon War.
A July 2006 cable, filed by then-US ambassador to Lebanon
Jeffrey Feltman, said the speaker, Nabih Berri, “condemned the ferocity of
Israel’s military response but admitted that a successful Israeli campaign
against Hezbollah would be an excellent way to destroy Hezbollah’s military
aspirations and discredit their political ambitions.”
Berri is a veteran
Shi’ite politician who has held the speaker position for the better part of two
decades. He is head of the Amal movement, like Hezbollah, a Shi’ite-dominated
party, but unlike the latter, comparatively secular.
“We are certain that
Berri hates Hezbollah as much, or even more, than the [Western-backed] March 14
politicians; after all, Hezbollah’s support...is drawn from the Shi’ites
who might otherwise be with Berri,” wrote Feltman, now assistant secretary of
state for Near Eastern affairs.
Feltman described the Amal leader as
being in “remarkably high” spirits during the meeting, which came a few days
into the month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah, at one point throwing his
head back in “riotous laughter.”
Feltman also wrote that Berri felt
betrayed by Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, who had promised stability in
Lebanon.
“We can never sit down at the table with him [Nasrallah] again,”
he quoted the speaker as saying in the cable. “We think he lied to us.”