Lebanon Continues Its Crackdown on Espionage Rings
The Lebanese authorities have released a woman and her brother in law who were arrested on suspicion of dealing with Israel after an investigation showed they were innocent as a crackdown on suspected collaborators continued with the arrest of at least two more suspects.
Evidence found in the woman”s home in Shebaa later turned out to belong to her father who has been serving a jail sentence in Syria since 2006 for collaborating with Israeli intelligence.
Investigations showed the two suspects were unaware of the nature of the evidence, the Lebanese daily al-Akhbar reported Saturday.
In a separate development, security forces raided the home of Mustapha Said near Ain el-Helweh camp following his arrest Friday morning in al-Qassir village in Nabatiyeh on suspicion of spying for Israel.
Said is the former brother in law of another suspect Nasser Nader who has been dubbed by investigators as one of the most valuable detainees in the espionage investigation.
Investigations showed that Said, along with Nader, was involved in the preparation for the murder of resistance leader Ghaleb al-Awali.
Said and Nader were not members of the same ring but accidently ran into each other when the latter was inspecting the neighborhood where Awali lived in the southern suburbs.
Nader then informed the Israelis out of fear of being uncovered and was then told that Mustapha was also a collaborator. The two men continued their mission up until the execution of the murder, the daily said.
According to investigators, Nader was also responsible of monitoring one of the resistance”s operations areas in the south during the 1980″s and was behind the death of a large number of fighters after informing the Israelis of their positions.
He was also responsible for the destruction of tens of buildings in the southern suburbs during the July 2006 war on Lebanon.
On Thursday, security forces also arrested Ziad al-Saadi from Shebaa on suspicion of dealing with Israel and raided two of his homes.
They suspected Saadi was preparing to flee the country after he sold one of his café shops in the town four days prior to his arrest, the Lebanese newspaper As Safir said Saturday.
Hizbullah has also taken security measures in the southern suburbs after discovering that collaborators had set up surveillance cameras at the entrances of some buildings, stores and institutions. Some of the cameras broadcast, in real time, the movements of officials in the resistance and of their convoys, al-Akhbar reported.
Separately, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that the crackdown on espionage networks reflects growing frictions among the Israeli intelligence agencies active Lebanon including the Mossad, military intelligence and Israel security agency (Shabak).
An Israeli expert in strategic and intelligence affairs said that "efforts to sign a power-sharing deal among Israeli intelligence services have not always succeeded in resolving tensions between them."
He quoted Israeli analysts as saying one of the reasons that led to the arrest of the suspected collaborators in Lebanon was "a flaw in hiding data."