Politician charged with spying for Israel

Beirut : A Lebanese military prosecutor on Tuesday charged a Christian party member who was formerly an army general with spying for Israel, the first politician to be charged in a widening espionage case.

Judge Sakr Sakr accused Fayez Karam of the Free Patriotic Movement of dealing with "the enemy's intelligence and meeting their officers abroad, and giving them information by phone", according to the charge sheet.

Karam, who belonged to the movement headed by Michel Aoun, a former army chief now allied to the Hezbollah movement, was also charged with providing Israel with information on the Free Patriotic Movement, Hezbollah and other parties.

"[(He used to give information] about what happened in closed meetings between the leaders of the aforementioned parties and their cadres in return for money and weapons," Sakr said.

If convicted, Karam, who was the head of a counter-terrorism and espionage unit in the army, would face the death penalty.

Karam's arrest has come as a shock to Lebanon, already reeling from a number of high-profile detentions of military and telecom employees, and has raised debate over how deeply Israel has managed to infiltrate and compromise Lebanon's security.

Three employees at state-owned telecom firms have been charged with spying, prompting Hezbollah to suggest Israel could have used telecom agents to manipulate phone records to implicate the group in the 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri.