Mossad Double Agents Arrested in Lebanon

[andyb]

Thursday, June 15, 2006
Security forces arrest second suspected Israeli collaborator
Former ISF officer believed linked to terror network

By Mohammed Zaatari and Karine Raad
Daily Star staff



SIDON: Security forces have arrested a suspected Israeli collaborator in Qrayyeh for his alleged affiliation with a terrorist network that may have carried out assassinations of several Lebanese and Palestinian leaders on behalf of Israel's Mossad agency.

Charbel Samra, a former Lebanese ISF officer, is one of many suspects whose names were mentioned during the interrogation of the reported leader of the network, Mahmoud Abu Rafeh.

On Tuesday, the Lebanese Army unveiled a terrorist network whose leader, former Lebanese ISF officer Abu Rafeh, confessed to masterminding four assassinations and revealed his Israeli connections.

Born in Hasbaya, Abu Rafeh, 59, acknowledged the killing of Mahmoud Majzoub, a leading member of the Islamic Jihad, and his brother Nidal in Sidon on May 26, 2006, Hizbullah officials Ali Hassan Deeb and Ali Saleh on August 16, 1999, and August 2, 2003, respectively.

Abu Rafeh also confessed to having assassinated the son of Ahmad Jibril, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), Jihad Ahmad Jibril in May 20, 2002.

The sources also revealed that another network member, Palestinian Hussein Khattab, was not apprehended and that security forces were still tracking him after several members of his family and friends were summoned for questioning.

The police raided Khattab's house in the Sidon area of Fawwar but the suspect had al-ready escaped. Sources told The Daily Star that Khattab had fled to Israel.

Acquaintances of Khattab, who works as a director of a Jordanian pharmaceutical company in Beirut, said the suspect was "witty and a liar capable of eluding any act without leaving evidence or fingerprints."

Khattab was also implica-ted in the murder of Jihad Ahmad Jibril.

Soon after the murder, the Syrian based Palestinian faction detained Khattab for six months, reportedly torturing him, before handing him over to the Lebanese Internal Security Forces, at which point he was released. According to the sources, Khattab disappeared soon after the murder of the Majzoub brothers.

Prime Minister Fouad Siniora congratulated security forces, saying the discovery of a network linked to Israel's Mossad proved that Israel did not change its stand vis-a-vis Lebanon, whether through the occupation of its territories, its constant violations to the Lebanese sovereignty or the assassination of Lebanese or Palestinian militants.

In a statement, Siniora said: "Israel must withdraw from the Shebaa Farms as its presence destabilizes Lebanon and the region and hampers the Lebanese government's efforts to spread its control on all its territories."

The head of the Future parliamentary bloc, MP Saad Hariri, said in a statement: "This achievement proves once again the importance of increasing efforts to protect Lebanon from Israeli security and other breaches."

Hariri had harsh words for the directorate general, however, saying it could have prevented the crimes in the first place.

"If the [army intelligence] directorate general had assumed the responsibilities stipulated in the Constitution and the law previously and dedicated its work to protecting national security instead of wasting its potential on internal political tasks, it would have uncovered and thwarted several vandalism operations and terrorist assassinations that targeted Lebanon," he said.

Meanwhile, the Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) foreign affairs office appealed to international community to condemn Israel's aggression as the "prime representative of state terrorism," especially after the exposure of Israel's continuous crimes in Lebanon and Palestine.


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