Lebanese Army Colonel Is Charged in Military Court With Spying for Israel
A Lebanese army colonel has been charged in a military court with spying for Israel, the state- run National News Agency reported, a day after two men were sentenced to death for spying for the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.
Judge Saqr Saqr “charged Colonel Antoine Abou Jaoude with dealing with the enemy’s intelligence, meeting with its agents abroad, and providing information on the resistance and the Lebanese army from 2006 until his arrest,” the agency reported. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor, reached by telephone in Jerusalem today, declined to comment.
Two Lebanese were sentenced to death yesterday, NNA reported, bringing to five the number of people handed the death penalty for spying for Israel in the past year. Last month a military court sentenced a 58-year-old Lebanese man to death for giving Israel information on the whereabouts of senior members of the Shiite Muslim Hezbollah movement, which fought a monthlong war with the Jewish state in 2006.
Lebanon, which has no diplomatic relations with Israel and is technically at war with its neighbor, arrested at least 35 people last year on spying charges, Major General Ashraf Reefi, head of Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces, has said. A retired Lebanese army colonel was arrested on Aug. 3 on charges of spying for Israel.
Lebanese law prescribes the death penalty or life imprisonment with hard labor for convicted spies. Such rulings are subject to appeal to the country’s highest court.
To contact the reporters on this story: Massoud A. Derhally in Beirut at mderhally@bloomberg.net; Jonathan Ferziger in Tel Aviv at jferziger@bloomberg.net.
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