Hezbollah claims it had a mole in its ranks
LONDON — Hezbollah has lifted the veil on “major infiltrations” by foreign intelligence agencies, implicitly confirming that its commander in charge of striking Israeli targets was working for Israel.
The radical Shiite movement, based in Lebanon, made a rare public acknowledgment of its struggle with espionage.
“There is no party in the world as big and sophisticated as Hezbollah that was able to stand with the same steadfastness despite some major infiltrations,” deputy leader Naim Qassem said during an interview with a radio station linked to the movement.
“Hezbollah has worked intensely on battling espionage among its ranks and in its entourage. Some cases surfaced, and they are very limited cases.”
Qassem’s words were taken as confirmation that Israel’s external intelligence agency, Mossad, recruited a high-level mole within Hezbollah. It emerged last month that a former head of the movement’s external operations unit had been placed on trial by Hezbollah for alleged spying for Israel. The man, who was named in the Lebanese media as Mohammed Shawraba, had responsibility for organizing attacks on Israeli targets worldwide. In particular, Shawraba’s prime task was to retaliate against Israel for the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, the then-commander of Hezbollah’s military wing, in Damascus in 2008.
At the time, Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, promised to avenge his military chief. However, one plot after another went wrong. At least five attempts to attack Israeli targets since Mughniyeh’s death were believed to have been sabotaged.
Shawraba is believed to have fallen under suspicion in 2012 when a suicide attack on Israeli tourists in Bulgaria, which claimed six lives, was quickly blamed on Hezbollah. One report suggested that he was fed false information about the location of a stockpile of Hezbollah weaponry in Damascus. When this location was bombed by Israeli aircraft, it was taken as proof of his supposed treachery. His fate is unknown.