وصفت صحيفة “ناشونال بوست” الكندية القيادي في “حزب الله” فوزي أيوب بأنه “إرهابي كندي”، لافتة الى أن إعلان مقتله في سوريا يؤشر الى فداحة الخسائر التي يتكبدها التنظيم هناك.
وأوضحت أن أيوب (48 عاماً) كان يعمل في سوبرماركت في تورنتو، لكنه صعد في التنظيم سريعاً، على رغم “قابليته للاعتقال قبل انهاء مهماته”.
وكان أيوب بدأ انضم لصفوف “حركة أمل” خلال الحرب اللبنانية لينتقل بعدها إلى “حزب الله” الذي ارسله الى رومانيا لخطف طائرة عراقية.
وأشارت الى أن أيوب بات مطلوباً لمكتب التحقيقات الفيديرالي (FBI) بعدما استخدم جواز سفره الكندي للدخول الى اسرائيل حيث “أراد تنفيذ عملية تفجير” لمصلحة “حزب الله”.
ولفتت الى ان ايوب كان جزء من صفقة تبادل اسرى بين “حزب الله” واسرائيل تضمنت تبادل 463 فلسطيني ولبناني مقابل رجل أعمال اسرائيلي و3 جثث لجنود اسرائيليين.
Canadian terrorist, who was a senior Hezbollah member, killed by Syrian rebels
Fawzi Ayoub was a hijacker, international terrorist operative and senior member of Hezbollah. He was also a naturalized Canadian citizen, but on Monday Lebanese media reported he was dead, killed in an ambush by Syrian rebels.
The 48-year-old former Toronto supermarket employee, who rose through the ranks of Hezbollah despite his tendency for getting arrested before completing his missions, was declared a “martyr” on a Facebook page filled with photos of him in battle fatigues.
The Lebanese-Canadian had been on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list since 2009, when he was indicted for using a false American passport to enter Israel “for the purpose of conducting a bombing” for Hezbollah, according to his wanted notice.
While several Canadian jihadists have died over the past year while fighting to topple President Bashar Al-Assad, Ayoub is the first known to have lost his life defending the dictator. He was reportedly killed in Aleppo on Sunday by the Western-backed Free Syrian Army.
His death, which Lebanese news outlets said had been announced by Hezbollah, is further proof the radical Shiite group is suffering mounting losses in Syria, where it has deployed hundreds of fighters to prop up a neighbor and key ally.
Described by his family in Toronto as religious and devout, Ayoub was a longtime Hezbollah operative and former member of an elite unit headed by the late terrorist Imad Mugniyah. “I came here by God’s order,” he testified after he was captured in Israel more than a decade ago.
“My point of view on the world is that I protect the oppressed,” he continued in his testimony. “I want to save the people from oppression.” Asked by an Israeli judge which oppressed people he wanted to save, he replied, “The Muslims are oppressed.”
Born in Beirut, he fought with the Amal militia during the Lebanese civil war and later joined Hezbollah, which sent him to Romania to hijack an Iraqi passenger plane. Hezbollah wanted to use the plane to barter for the release of Shiite clerics who were being held in Baghdad.
Although Ayoub was arrested by Romanian authorities before the attack, his partner evaded capture and downed the jet in the Saudi desert, killing more than 60 people. Months later, Hezbollah secured Ayoub’s release by bribing Romanian officials and he came to Canada in 1988.
“Did you tell the Canadians that you were involved in Romania?” an Israeli judge asked him at his trial, according to a transcript of the proceedings obtained by the National Post.
“No,” he replied.
“Why?”
“They didn’t ask me.”
Ayoub testified he had led a “normal life” in Canada and worked for a computer company, but his second wife longed for home. “My wife didn’t like the life in Canada,” he said. So they went back to Lebanon and bought a bakery, he said in his testimony.
Upon returning to Beirut in 2000, he was recruited into Hezbollah’s Islamic Jihad unit and trained for a mission to Israel. Using a fake U.S. passport that identified him as Frank Boschi, he made his way to Hebron. Israeli authorities claim he intended to assassinate the Israeli prime minister.
Arrested in July 2002, he was returned to Lebanon two years later as part of a prisoner swap that saw 436 Palestinians and Lebanese freed in exchange for kidnapped Israeli businessman Elhanan Tannenbaum and the bodies of three Israeli soldiers abducted and killed by Hezbollah in 2000.
Television footage showed Ayoub disembarking from a plane at Beirut airport and kissing the hand of Hezbollah boss Hassan Nasrallah. “He said at one point he may [return to Canada] but that’s not in his immediate plans,” a spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs said at the time.
But a return to Canada became all but impossible after he was charged by the United States and identified as a wanted terrorist. Instead he was apparently given a command position, leading Hezbollah forces in northern Syria.
Although Hezbollah initially denied it was fighting alongside regime forces in Syria, it has since acknowledged its role. Hezbollah fears the loss of Syria will cut it off from its primary state sponsor, Iran, which has long trained, armed and financed the Lebanese terror group.