Nasrallah Confirms Egypt Detainee is Hizbullah Member
Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah confirmed on Friday that a man Egypt is holding on suspicion of planning attacks there is a member of the Lebanese Shiite movement, but denied the group is seeking to destabilize the country.
He was referring to Sami Shihab, one of 49 people who have been arrested and are being held on suspicion of belong to Hizbullah and calling for rebellion against Egypt”s leadership.
Nasrallah, speaking on the group”s Al-Manar television, said, "All the accusations are lies and a fabrication aimed at setting the people of Egypt against Hizbullah."
The Secretary-General said Shihab, a Lebanese citizen, was in Egypt on a "logistical mission" related to the Gaza Strip.
Shihab”s brother, Hassan, was quoted in the pan-Arabic daily Al-Hayat on Friday as saying "the family knew nothing about Sami”s activities before members of Hizbullah visited the family house and told us that he was a member of the resistance and he had ties with the brothers in Palestine."
Hizbullah, which is backed by Egypt”s regional rivals Iran and Syria, is a vocal supporter of Hamas, the Islamist rulers of Gaza, and has lashed out at Egypt for closing its crossing with the Palestinian enclave.
"There are parties in the Arab world that are offensive against the resistance and are very close to their American and Israeli masters," Nasrallah said in reference to Arab leaders that are opposing Hamas in Gaza.
In December, after Israel launched a devastating offensive in Gaza, Nasrallah called on Egyptians to take to the streets in their millions to force open the crossing and urged Egyptian army commanders to resign in protest.
He went on to add saying: "The aim here is to agitate the Egyptian people and to defame Hizbullah”s pure and bright image. This aims to only please the Americans and Israelis for the Egyptian regime has failed by all means."
"If aiding the Palestinians is a crime, then I am guilty and proud of it," Nasrallah said.
He added that the Egyptian regime should be charged and condemned for besieging Gaza, as it works day and night on destroying Gaza tunnels dug by the Palestinian Hamas movement.
"The Egyptian regime is escalating its aggression against resistance movements," Nasrallah said. However, he went on to say: "I fully reject and deny all charges that Hizbullah was intending to launch an act of aggression in Egypt or at any part of the world."
He denied the Egyptian charge of attempting to spread the Shiite way of thinking and practices calling it "baseless", adding that no single individual could do so in Egypt.
Arrests were first made in November and the rest of the group rounded up by the end of last month, a security official had said.
Egyptian state media has reported that Shihab was suspected of heading a Hizbullah unit responsible for neighboring states and that Palestinians and Sudanese were among those arrested.
The suspects are also accused of espionage, forging official documents and preparing explosives.
The detention may be renewed every 15 days for six months, when the prosecution must either charge them or release them.
One of the suspects” lawyers, Abdel Moneim Abdel Qudus, told Agence France Presse (AFP) in Cairo after Nasrallah”s speech that lawyers still had no access to the suspects and that he could not comment on Secretary-General”s announcement.
"We have said all along that we have not been able to meet any detainees or attend interrogations. We don”t know what is happening," he said.
"If the accusations are true, why is the prosecution keeping the evidence from the public?"
Another lawyer acting for some of the accused, Montassar el-Zayat, accused security of bringing politically motivated charges against the suspects.
"My impression is that it is a fabricated case created by Egyptian security in the context of bad relations between Hizbullah and Egypt. It is a pressure card," he said.
Egyptian officials have accused Nasrallah of fomenting sedition and state media branded him an "Iranian agent."
Egypt, a mostly Sunni Muslim country, has accused the Shiite government of Iran and Hizbullah of conspiring to spread Shiite ideology in the region.
The general prosecutor listed "spreading Shiite ideology" as one of the aims of the detained men.
Egypt and Iran broke off relations a year after Islamist revolutionaries overthrew Iran”s pro-Western shah in 1979.
Iran opposed Cairo”s 1979 peace treaty with Israel and named a street in Tehran after the assassin of Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president killed by an Egyptian Islamist militant in 1981.
Nasrallah was quick to point out that Hizbullah does not intend to enter into any form of enmity and conflict with any Arab, Islamic or other regime in the world.
"Hizbullah is a purely Lebanese party from its leadership to its base, it has no branches anywhere else," he said.
He went on to define the party”s role in saying: "Hizbullah”s mission is to protect Lebanon from the Zionist danger. We do not interfere in any internal conflict of any state in the world."
In referring to the Palestinian cause Nasrallah said: "Helping the Palestinian is a duty for Hizbullah."
He denied the party”s connection to events in Yemen saying: "We have nothing to do with what is going on in Yemen and Bahrain. I call on Yemen to benefit us in telling us which Hizbullah elements are helping the Houthies?"
Nasrallah ended his address on two notes; first he denied press reporters that he wanted to win the June 7 legislative elections in order to topple President Michel Suleiman calling this claim false and not true.
Second, he also denied stories that he is in dispute with his allies Amal movement headed by Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and the Free Patriotic Movement headed by MP Michel Aoun.