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| Hezbollah on charges of spying for Israel |
A judicial official told AFP on Tuesday that Lebanese authorities had arrested a man close to Hezbollah on charges of spying for Israel and providing intelligence that led to the killing of the party's leaders.
"A high-level Israeli agent was arrested last week in Beirut," said the official, who is following the investigation and asked not to be identified.
He claimed that the suspect was "involved in providing Israel with accurate information that led to the assassination of Hezbollah officials, including four senior security leaders."
The official added: "He was very close to Hezbollah leaders, and he possessed extensive information because of his relationship with them."
According to the official, the man was detained last week at Beirut airport as he was preparing to board a flight to Iraq.
The suspect is from southern Lebanon and has made several trips to Iraq, his wife's homeland.
From there, according to the same official, he would go to Türkiye to meet with officers and agents linked to the Israeli Mossad and provide them with information about the targets he was gathering data on in Beirut.
The judicial source did not reveal the identity of the officials who are believed to have been targeted by the leaked information, nor did it specify the timing of the assassinations, noting that investigations are still ongoing.
Dozens of senior Hezbollah commanders have been killed in Israeli airstrikes since October 8, 2023, and again when the war escalated in March 2026.
This includes former Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated by Israel in a major raid on the southern suburbs of Beirut in September 2024.
The Times of Israel says that Lebanon and Israel have been officially at war for decades, and Lebanese security services have arrested dozens of people suspected of working for Israel, many of whom were recruited online in the wake of the country’s economic collapse that began in 2019.
In October, a judicial source told AFP that more than 30 people had been arrested on suspicion of providing Israel with accurate information about Hezbollah facilities and the movements of its members during its previous war with Israel in 2023 and 2024. People previously convicted of working for Israel have been sentenced to up to 25 years in prison.
