Lebanese report: Three spies for Israel arrested
Syrian national, his Lebanese wife and another Lebanese national allegedly admit to collecting intel on Lebanese security officials for future Israeli attacks.
Lebanese authorities reportedly arrested three people who were allegedly working for a network spying for Israel, media in the country said Sunday.
According to the official Lebanese news agency, a Syrian national and his Lebanese wife were arrested, along with another Lebanese national. According to the report, the three admitted to the crimes attributed to them.
A Lebanese defense official told the Hezbollah-affiliated TV station Al Manar that the spy ring has been operating for a year, and was exposed in the Sidon area, on the western coast of Lebanon.
Lebanese website Naharnet reported that the three were gathering information on a series of security and military officials in Lebanon in order to assassinate them.
An alleged Israeli spy station, according to Lebanese reports from 2013.
They also reportedly photographed "sensitive" areas and roads in southern Lebanon. After photographing the sites, they allegedly passed on the material to their Israeli handlers so it could be used to mount future attacks.
There have been several reports in recent years in the Lebanese press about citizens being arrested on suspicion of spying for Israel. The media in Lebanon also reported on alleged agents exposed working for Israel within the ranks of Hezbollah.
The most well-known of these alleged agents was Mohammed Shurba, a high-ranking official in Hezbollah's Operations Directorate, whose story made headlines in the Arab press in December 2014.
He was accused, according to foreign media, of aiding Israel to thwart Hezbollah terror attacks, planned in revenge for the death of the organization's former military chief, Imad Mughniyah, who was killed in Damascus in 2008.
Shurba, Arab press claimed, thwarted a Hezbollah attempt to assassinate former prime minister Ehud Olmert and exposed the terror organization's involvement in the deadly terror attack against Israeli tourists in Burgas in July 2012.
In addition to occasional reports of alleged Israeli spies who were capture, Lebanese media has also been reporting about Israeli espionage facilities that were allegedly uncovered by Lebanese security forces or by Hezbollah in different areas of the country.
In April, Lebanese media reported that the interrogation of a security guard working at the Lebanese parliament in Beirut, who was suspected of spying for the Mossad, eventually found that it was his wife who was allegedly recruited by the Israeli intelligence agency.
In September 2015, Lebanese media reported that an Israeli listening device was bombed and destroyed near the village of Adloun in Sidon. According to the report, it was Hezbollah that worked to destroy the hidden device. Lebanese news site Elnashra, however, claimed it was an Israeli drone that destroyed the device after it was discovered.
