BEIRUT, 15 June 2006 — The Lebanese Army said yesterday it had dismantled a network used by the Israeli spy agency Mossad to carry out attacks in Lebanon, mainly against Hezbollah and pro-Syrian Palestinian groups.
“The army arrested a terrorist cell working for Israel’s Mossad, and its members admitted responsibility for the May 26 attack that killed Mahmoud Al-Majzoub and his brother,” the army statement said. Majzoub, one of the leaders in Lebanon of the radical Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, was killed by a car bomb in the southern city of Sidon.
“Mahmoud Rafeh confessed that he was recruited along with four others by the Israeli Mossad since 1999 to carry out assassinations inside Lebanon,” the statement said. The members of the cell also “admitted taking part in the assassination of Hezbollah officials Ali Saleh in 2003 and Ali Hassan Dib in 1999, as well as the killing of Jihad Jibril in 2002,” the army added.
Jibril’s father, Ahmed, is the Damascus-based chief of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command. “The cell would appear to have had ties with Israel for several years, and its members were trained there,” the statement said.
“It would also seem that in the bombing that killed the Majzoub brothers, the cell brought a booby trapped door from Israel for the car used in the attack.” The army said it had seized the detonator that set off the device, as a well as explosives and electronic materials.
Hassan Nasrallah, head of the Islamist Hezbollah, had said Ali Saleh, whose killing the army blamed on the cell, was in charge of coordinating with Palestinian groups.
Majzoub had been responsible for operations “inside” the Palestinian territories, according to Lebanese security sources. His killing sparked an escalating series of tit-for-tat cross-border exchanges between Israel and Lebanon that included rockets fired into the Jewish state and retaliatory air strikes on militant camps inside Lebanon.
“Investigations by military intelligence showed that the terrorist network that was discovered had links to the Israeli Mossad for several years and that its members underwent training both inside Israel and outside,” the army statement said. “The network was tasked by this agency with carrying out these operations and was given secret communication and monitoring devices for this purpose along with detailed maps of the target ... forged documents and bags with secret pockets.”
The army said Rafeh had also confessed to planting other bombs that were either found and defused before they were detonated or missed their targets. Hezbollah as well as Jibril welcomed the arrests in interviews with Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV. Pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud said they proved that “Israel had not ceased its attempts to sabotage Lebanon.”
Television footage released by the Lebanese Army showed equipment it said was used in the latest attack and discovered either at Rafeh’s house in the Lebanese town of Hasbaya, on the border with the Jewish state, or in a chalet that he used.
