Lebanese telecoms infiltrated by Israel

BEIRUT, Lebanon, July 19 (UPI) -- The leader of Hezbollah wants an official government investigation into how Lebanese nationals working in a mobile phone company became Israeli spies.

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said the arrest last week of a second employee at Alfa cell phone network provider shows Israeli intelligence has infiltrated Lebanon's telecom sector and is jeopardizing national security.

He claimed that the potential exists for the spies to manipulate call patterns, call times and other data. This casts doubt on the veracity of any Alfa telephone information that Lebanese security authorities might use when prosecuting alleged spies.

Nasrallah said use of any phone data by the U.N.-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon investigating the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in February 2005 shows it up as "an Israeli project."

The tribunal was set up by the United Nations and the Lebanese government in May 2007 to investigate the killing of Hariri, who had resigned as prime minister in October 2004. The businessman and 22 others died when a massive roadside bomb was detonated as his motorcade drove past the St. George Hotel in Beirut.

In two reports the tribunal indicated that Syria may have been involved in the explosion. Hariri is widely credited with reconstructing Beirut after the 15-year civil war and also the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon.

Last week security authorities arrested Tareq Rabaa, a telecom engineer at Alfa and are questioning him along with another technician employee, Charbel Qazzi, arrested at the end of June.

Rabaa has worked for Alfa since 1996 and is alleged to have started spying for Israel in 2001.

They are the latest arrests in an 18-month crackdown that officials claim has decimated an alleged elaborate and extensive Israeli espionage operation aimed largely at gathering information on Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim movement that fought Israel's vaunted military to a standstill in a 34-day war in July-August 2006.

Some 70 suspects have been arrested since November 2008. More than 20 have been indicted and could face the death penalty for treason.

Lebanon has been seeking out spies since before 2008 and suspects have come from all major religious groups -- Maronite Christians, Sunni Muslims and Shiites. Several spy cells were allegedly built around families, involving wives, brothers and in-laws.

The most prominent was Adib Alam, a general in Lebanon's principal security service, the General Security Directorate, until he retired eight years ago. Recruited in 1982, he allegedly ran a 12-member cell that included his wife and nephew, a GSD corporal.

The others included three army colonels, businessmen, a former mayor, a stone mason, a math teacher and a gas station owner who allegedly bugged vehicles used by Hezbollah chieftains.

The extent of spying networks gathering information has caused embarrassment for Nasrallah and his political and paramilitary organization and Hezbollah.

Nasrallah became leader of Hezbollah after Israel assassinated the movement's leader Abbas al-Musawi in 1992. Hezbollah's military campaigns of the late 1990s are believed to have been factor that led to the Israeli decision to withdraw from southern Lebanon in 2000, ending 18 years of occupation.

Nasrallah often uses inflammatory rhetoric toward Jews and Israel. This includes his avowed belief that they have greatly inflated the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust.