Lebanon has asked the Ukrainian embassy in Beirut to extradite a man hiding there who is suspected of working for the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.
This is reported by Agence France-Presse, citing a source in Hezbollah and the words of the head of the General Security Service of Lebanon.
A Hezbollah source said that in September, Hezbollah detained a man — a citizen of Syria, Palestine, and Ukraine — who had parked his motorcycle on the road leading to Beirut airport through the southern suburbs of the city, which Hezbollah controls. The motorcycle was carrying an explosive device disguised as a battery.
Hezbollah held the man until the outbreak of the US-Israel-Iran war on February 28, in which the Lebanese group entered on Iran’s side. On March 6, Israeli forces struck a building in the southern suburbs near where he was being held, allowing him to escape to the Ukrainian embassy, the source added.
Lebanonʼs General Security Service said it had managed to arrest five alleged members of the group that worked with the man and brought them to justice. Its head, Hassan Shukeir, told reporters that the Ukrainian embassy in Lebanon contacted them on March 10 with a request to allow a Ukrainian citizen who was at the embassy and had lost his passport to leave through Beirut airport.
“After checking his name and photo, we learned that he was wanted by the Lebanese judicial system, and that the Lebanese security services had announced a series of searches and investigations against him,” he added.
Shukeir said Lebanese authorities had informed the embassy that it was obliged to hand over the man. He added that he was wanted for his involvement in an Israeli Mossad cell that planned assassinations and bombings in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
- In October, a judicial source told AFP that more than 30 people had been arrested on suspicion of providing Israel with information about Hezbollah targets and the movements of its members during the previous war between the group and Israel in 2023-2024. Spying for Israel in Lebanon carries a sentence of up to 25 years in prison.
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