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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| All foreigners in Lebanon could be spies: MP |
| 2010-03-03 |
| [Al Arabiya Latest] Security must be stepped up for all foreigners entering Lebanon as they could be secret agents like those who murdered a top Hamas militant in Dubai, a Hezbollah lawmaker said on Tuesday. "We must tighten foreign passport control at the airport and elsewhere in the country," Hezbollah MP Nawaf Moussawi told AFP. "Every Lebanese and Arab must deal with holders of foreign passports as potential spies." Mahmud al-Mabhouh, a founder of the military wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, was found dead in his luxurious Dubai hotel room on Jan. 20. Dubai police have said he was drugged then suffocated in what they say was a Cold War-style hit carried out by Israel's Mossad secret service. British, Irish, French, Australian and German passports were used in the murder, the police said. Moussawi slammed European states for failing to "assume responsibility for the violation of their sovereignty" over the use of their passports by Mabhouh's killers in Dubai. "If European countries do not respect their own passport-holders... then they must expect they will be treated with suspicion," he said. It happened in 2006 Moussawi said Israeli journalists with EU passports had also entered Lebanon in 2006 during the Shiite militant party's devastating war with the Jewish state. "It happened in Lebanon in 2006, so the risk of it happening again is more than likely," said the MP. Lebanese authorities have made dozens of arrests in an expanding crackdown on Israeli espionage rings launched last year. Lebanon and Israel remain technically at a state of war, and convicted spies face life in prison with hard labor or the death penalty if found guilty of contributing to Lebanese loss of life. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Monday called for any Lebanese citizens convicted of spying for the Jewish state in a series of trials in recent months to be hanged. Retired security official Mahmud Qassem Rafeh, 63, was sentenced to death last month for espionage on behalf of Israel. He was also convicted for involvement in a 2006 car bombing in the southern coastal town of Sidon that killed brothers Mahmoud and Nidal Mazjoub, members of Islamic Jihad. Admits role in killing Moussawi comments came as a senior security source said a Lebanese man arrested on suspicion of spying for Israel has confessed to have helped in the assassination of a Hezbollah commander in 2004, The source said Michel Abdo was arrested three weeks ago and is considered "a very important spy". He will be tried before a military court. "His role was to facilitate the movement of the Israeli Mossad agents who carried out the assassination," the source told Reuters. "He picked them up from a point near the sea south of Beirut and took them to his house where they planed the assassination he then facilitated their departure," the source said. Israel, which fought a 34-day war with Hezbollah in 2006 has not commented on the arrests. Ghalib Awali, a Hezbollah military commander, was killed by a bomb in the southern suburbs of Beirut in 2004 as he got into his car. Abdo is the second suspect to be tied to his killing. Israel assassinated the group's leader Abbas al-Moussawi in 1992 in an air strike on his car. Lebanon has tried and convicted several people in recent years of spying on and plotting against the group. A probe into spying for Israel has led to more than 50 arrests since April. More than 20 have been formally charged. Lebanon, which is in a state of war with Israel, has described the arrests as a blow to Israel's intelligence-gathering in the country. Hezbollah has called for the death penalty for all suspects convicted. Lebanese courts have handed down what were widely seen as light sentences against Lebanese who have worked with the Israeli occupation and its local militias after Israeli forces ended a 22-year occupation of mainly Shiite south Lebanon in May 2000. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #3 "Security must be stepped up for all foreigners entering Lebanon as they could be secret agents..." Well that's certainly true for Syrians entering Lebanon. |
| Posted by: lord garth 2010-03-03 14:39 |
| #2 "Every Lebanese and Arab must deal with holders of foreign passports as potential spies." Why else would anyone want to come here? |
| Posted by: Zebulon Greck1077 2010-03-03 14:13 |
| #1 Chedar revolution, anyone? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2010-03-03 03:08 |