Lebanon to raise Israeli espionage charge at UN

Beirut: Lebanon will raise accusations of Israeli espionage at the United Nations, Information Minister Tareq Mitri said on Wednesday, after two telecom workers were arrested and charged with spying for the Jewish state.

In the last month Lebanon has detained two employees at the state-owned phone company Alfa and two men have been sentenced to death — all four convicted of, or suspected of, spying for Israel.

A wider investigation has led to the arrest of more than 50 people since April last year.

Mitri, speaking after a cabinet meeting, said ministers in the unity government agreed unanimously "to raise a detailed report on the file of the agents to the [United Nations] Security Council".

Last week a court sentenced Ali Mantash to death for giving Israel security information it used in its 33-day war with Hezbollah in 2006. In total, three people have received death sentences. Israel has not commented on the cases.

Lebanon, which is in a formal state of war with Israel, had described the arrests as a major blow to Israel's intelligence gathering in the country and said that many of the detained suspects helped identify targets bombed in the 2006 war.

But the arrests of Alfa employees Charbel Qazzi and Tareq Raba'a raised fears over how deeply Israel had infiltrated Lebanon's telecoms and security sectors, and revived internal divisions which led to street fighting in Beirut two years ago.

Manipulation

Hezbollah has suggested Israel could have used agents to manipulate evidence, such as phone records, to implicate Hezbollah in the 2005 killing of Lebanon's former prime minister Rafik Hariri.

Supporters of Hariri's son Sa'ad, who became prime minister last year at the head of a unity government after months of political crisis, accused Hezbollah of trying to undermine the work of the international tribunal investigating Hariri's death.

Principal sentenced

A Lebanese military court on Wednesday sentenced a former school principal to death on charges of spying for Israel in 2008, a judicial official told AFP.

The court found that Hassan Ahmad Al Hussain, 58, provided Israel with information concerning the leadership of Hezbollah and the location of sites used by the group, which fought a devastating war with Israel in 2006.

Lebanon and Israel remain technically in a state of war, and convicted spies face life in prison with hard labour or the death penalty if found guilty of contributing to Lebanese loss of life.