BEIRUT, 19 May 2004 — Lebanon has cracked a spy ring recruited by Israel to help assassinate the head of the resistance group Hezbollah, a Beirut newspaper said yesterday.
A Palestinian woman in her forties is in custody, accused of being recruited by Israeli agents in Tunisia to establish a spy ring comprising Arab workers in Lebanon, the daily As-Safir said in a front-page story.
As-Safir, quoting “informed sources”, said the “network of agents” had been uncovered by Lebanese security forces and Hezbollah, and it had been armed and trained by Israel.
The group’s leader was a woman named Jamal Zaarura who came from the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr Al-Bared in northern Lebanon and carried a Tunisian passport. One of her accomplices informed police of the group’s activities.
A Lebanese security source said a plot of some kind had been uncovered but could give no further details. Public Prosecutor Adnan Addoum told Reuters no such case had been referred to the judiciary and “this was media talk”.
Israel, which recently stepped up its threats against the leaders of Islamist groups sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state, declined comment.
As-Safir said the woman, a resident of Nahr Al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon, had recruited an Egyptian man living in Beirut, who had also been arrested along with a lover she had tried unsuccessfully to bring into the ring.
The woman said she had been asked to liaise between two cells plotting to kill Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, using explosives and a poison to be applied to clothing, the daily added.
As-Safir said the woman was arrested after a man she had unsuccessfully approached to join the ring warned Hezbollah, which hounded Israeli troops out of south Lebanon in 2000 after a 22-year occupation.
In 1992, Israel killed Hezbollah’s then leader Sheikh Abbas Al-Musawi, his wife and their six-year-old son in an airstrike on his car as he returned to Beirut from the south.
Security sources in Israel said the Mossad spy agency stepped up its hunt for Islamist leaders abroad in 2002, after Al-Qaeda blew up an Israeli-owned hotel and tried to shoot down an Israeli airliner in Kenya.
At least two Lebanese who Israeli sources said were linked to Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah have since died in booby trap bombings that local authorities attributed to Mossad.
Lebanon has jailed some 30 people since December over bomb attacks on American-style food outlets, foiled attacks on the fortress-like US Embassy and alleged plots to assassinate US Ambassador Vincent Battle.
