BEIRUT: Beautiful women, clandestine trips abroad and a hurried escape across a mine-infested border... All are aspects of Israeli espionage networks unraveling in Lebanon and worthy of a spy novel.
Nearly 20 suspected spies, including a butcher, a mobile phone salesman and a retired general, have been detained in recent months as part of a long-running probe by Lebanese intelligence into Israeli sleeper cells. And more arrests are expected, security officials say. Lebanon has filed a complaint to the United Nations over Israeli spy networks, the premier’s office said yesterday.
“The Lebanese delegation to the United Nations has filed a complaint over Israel’s violation of Lebanese sovereignty and (Security Council) resolution 1701,” Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s office said in a statement.
The Beirut government also asked UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon to repatriate two suspected Lebanese spies who had fled to Israel in recent days amid a crackdown on alleged Israeli spy networks in Lebanon.Intelligence officials, fearing an imminent Israeli operation against Hezbollah, said they told the Shiite group about their discovery. From that point on the spy rings began to tumble like a house of cards. “The suspects arrested were part of different cells, each numbering three people at the most, and were not connected,” Gen. Ashraf Rifi, head of the Internal Security Forces, told AFP in an interview.
