Lebanon Cracks ‘Israeli Spy Ring’

A Palestinian woman in her forties is in custody, accused of being recruited by Israeli agents in Tunisia to establish a spy ring comprising Arab workers in Lebanon, the daily Al-Safir said in a front-page story on Tuesday.

A Lebanese security source said a plot of some kind had been uncovered but could give no further details.

But public prosecutor Adnan Addum said no such case had been referred to the judiciary and "this was media talk".

Israel, which recently stepped up its threats against the leaders of Islamist groups, declined comment.

Recruitment

Al-Safir said the woman, a resident of Nahr al-Barid refugee camp in northern Lebanon, had recruited an Egyptian man living in Beirut, who had also been arrested along with a lover she had tried unsuccessfully to bring into the ring.

The woman said she had been asked to liaise between two cells plotting to kill Shaikh Hasan Nasr Allah, the head of Hizb Allah, using explosives and a poison to be applied to clothing, the daily added.

Al-Safir said the woman was arrested after a man she had unsuccessfully approached to join the ring warned Hizb Allah, which hounded Israeli troops out of south Lebanon in 2000 after a 22-year occupation.

In 1992, Israel killed Hizb Allah’s then leader Shaikh Abbas al-Musawi, his wife and their six-year-old son in an air strike on his car as he returned to Beirut from the south.