BEIRUT: Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah yesterday denied an Iraqi website report that he had been poisoned and then saved by Iranian doctors, calling it “psychological warfare” against his group.
“This information is totally unfounded,” the head of Lebanon’s powerful Shiite armed group said in an interview broadcast on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television.
“I am sitting here in front of you ... There was no poisoning. It is pure fabrication,” he said.
Nasrallah said the report could have been “part of the psychological war” against Hezbollah aimed at giving the impression that there are internal divisions within the group.
On Wednesday the Iraqi Internet website Almalaf reported that Nasrallah had survived an assassination bid in which he was poisoned with a “highly toxic chemical substance.” Nasrallah, 48, is in “critical condition over the past few days,” Almalaf said, quoting diplomatic sources in Beirut. It said his life was saved by Iranian doctors who rushed to his side.
“A 15-member Iranian medical time flew to Beirut with all the necessary equipment to save his life,” Almalaf said.
Nasrallah rarely appears in public because of fears for his security.
In September a Lebanese military tribunal cleared 12 people of plotting to assassinate Nasrallah in 2006, citing a lack of evidence.
In April 2006 — three months before the devastating summer war between Israel and Hezbollah — the Lebanese paper As Safir reported that the 12 had plotted to assassinate Nasrallah on his way to national reconciliation talks.
Nasrallah was elected secretary-general of Hezbollah in 1992, after an Israeli helicopter gunship killed his predecessor Abbas Al-Musawi in southern Lebanon. His eldest son Hadi was killed in a Hezbollah military operation against Israeli troops in southern Lebanon in 1997.
Nasrallah also denied in the Al-Manar interview any links to a drug and money-laundering ring broken up by Colombian authorities who say that among those arrested were three men suspected of shipping funds to the Lebanese group.
