By Rachel Hirshfeld
Hizbullah arrested three people over suspicions of running a spy network for Israel and the United States, sources told Al Arabiya on Monday.
The three suspects, identified as Mohammed al-Husseini, Jihad Jaloul and Mohammed al-Sabaa, were nabbed in a suburb in southern Beirut, the sources said. The three agents have reportedly been active among Hizbullah members and provided both the Mossad and the CIA with information about terrorist group.
A report by the Lebanese daily An-Nahar said that the three spies were not members of Hizbullah but had good relations with members of the group.
In June of last year, Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah boasted that the party had identified at least two spies working for the CIA had infiltrated the group. He proceeded to dub the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon a “den of spies,” The Beirut Daily Star noted.
According to the report An-Nahar, the most ‘dangerous’ of the spies, a Lebanese man who was allegedly working for a Western intelligence agency, was tasked with returning to Lebanon and monitoring the movements of a Hizbullah official with whom he was friends.
The Hizbullah official, the report states, lives in Burj al-Barajneh near the residence of the alleged spy and is thought to have been involved in 1980s-era Beirut operations “that targeted the interests of big countries.”
Information An-Nahar claims to have obtained indicates that the spy’s ultimate mission was to lure the Hizbullah official to a place where Western intelligence agents would arrest him.
The nature of the mission delegated to the other two members of the alleged spy cell is currently unknown, the paper said.
