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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Israel recruits Lebanese assassin to help find missing airman |
| 2005-03-03 |
| Israeli intelligence recruited a Lebanese assassin and bodguard of slain former Christian militia leader Eli Hobeika to help track down missing airman Ron Arad, a newspaper said Thursday. The air force navigator has been missing since his aircraft was shot down over Lebanon in 1986. Israel has accused Lebanon's Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah of handing him over to Iran, claims Tehran has long denied. Hobeika's bodyguard Robert Hatem told the Yediot Aharanot newspaper that he had been interrogated by Israel's spy agency Mossad in 1994 and 2000 over Arad as well as the disappearance of four Iranian diplomats in Beirut in 1982. Nicknamed the "cobra", Hatem said he had commanded Hobeika's bodyguard unit for nearly 20 years, carrying out murders, torture, bomb attacks, extortion and theft on behalf of the leader. To the best of his memory "it is very likely" that he shot at least one of the Iranians, Yediot quoted Hatem as saying. "In any case, the four are dead. There is no doubt of that," he added. Hobeika was killed in January 2002 in a car bombing near his home in a Christian suburb of Beirut. He was frequently accused of being behind the massacres in the Palestinian camps of Sabra and Shatila in 1982, which an Israeli government committee found also Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, then defence minister, indirectly to blame. In January 2003, Israel released 400 Palestinians, some 30 other Arabs and one German in a prisoner exchange with Hezbollah. But until it receives concrete information on Arad's fate, Israel is refusing to free long-time Lebanese prisoner Samir Kantar, who is serving multiple life sentences handed down in 1980 for killing three Israelis. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #1 bodguard of slain former Christian militia leader Is this supposed to be surprising? This sounds like a typical Mossad thing. Yawn. |
| Posted by: BigEd 2005-03-03 11:10:03 AM |