Matthew Levitt: Hezbollah's European enablers

 

Matthew Levitt: Hezbollah's European enablers

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/03/11/matthew-levitt-hezbollahs-european-enablers/

 

Matthew Levitt, National Post | 13/03/11 | Last Updated: 13/03/08 4:37 PM ET

More from National Post

 

This week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper will welcome his French

counterpart, Jean-Marc Ayrault, who is making his first official visit to

Canada since taking office last May. Their meeting provides a timely

opportunity for Ottawa to teach Paris a thing or two about how to deal with

Hezbollah.

 

Hezbollah has long sought to engage in financial and logistical support

activities in Canada. Thankfully, Canadian law enforcement investigators and

intelligence agencies have taken the threat seriously.

 

Hezbollah has been banned in Canada since 2002. But not so in France or the

European Union as a whole. Indeed, France remains ardently opposed to

banning Hezbollah. But recent events in Europe may bring change. This

includes the conclusion of Bulgarian investigators that Hezbollah was behind

the Burgas bus bombing in Bulgaria last July, which killed five Israelis and

a local bus driver.

 

In fact, Hezbollah has been active in Europe since the terrorist group's

founding in the early 1980s, when it engaged in a long list of attacks

across the continent. But while it has continuously raised funds, procured

arms and provided logistical support from Europe for attacks to be carried

out elsewhere, it had been years since Hezbollah last carried out an attack

on European soil. Then came the Burgas bombing in 2012.

 

In Cyprus, meanwhile, authorities arrested a suspected Hezbollah operative

who collected information about Israeli tourists arriving in Cyprus in a

plot eerily similar to the one that killed six people a few days later in

Bulgaria. The suspect initially denied ties to terrorist activity, but later

admitted being a Hezbollah operative. Before sending him on his mission to

Cyprus, Hezbollah first used him as a courier, dispatching him to deliver

packages to Hezbollah operatives in places such as Turkey, the Netherlands

and France.

 

That there are Hezbollah operatives in Europe should not surprise. Hezbollah

has maintained networks throughout Europe for some 30 years. Indeed,

Hezbollah's first documented attack in Europe was in 1983 - the same year

Hezbollah bombed French, Italian and American troops in Beirut - when

Hezbollah's Islamic Jihad Organization claimed responsibility for bombs

placed at a train station and aboard a train from Paris to Marseilles. This

was followed in 1984 by the hijacking of TWA flight 847 from Athens to Rome

and the arrest at Zurich airport of a Hezbollah operative carrying

explosives in a cloth belt around his waist. He was on his way to Rome at

the time, leading Italian authorities to arrest a Hezbollah cell there two

weeks later. 1985 saw Hezbollah bombings in Spain, Denmark and France.

 

Between December 1985 and September 1986, Hezbollah operatives using a

variety of cover names bombed 15 targets in Paris. The Paris cell finally

was disrupted only after German authorities arrested Mohammad Ali Hamadi -

one of the TWA 847 hijackers - who was caught at the Frankfurt airport in

January 1987 carrying explosives destined for Paris. More arrests followed

in Germany, including the 1989 arrest of Bassem Makki, who was plotting

attacks on Israeli and American interests in Germany. Over the next few

years, Hezbollah operatives and Iranian hit men assassinated Iranian

dissidents in a series of murders across Europe.

 

In the 1990s, Hezbollah founded a special unit - Unit 1800 - dedicated to

supporting Palestinian terrorist groups and infiltrating its own operatives

into Israel to collect intelligence and execute terrorist attacks within

Israel's borders. Hezbollah infiltrated a small number of operatives into

Israel through Southeast Asia, but Europe was its preferred stepping stone

into Israel. Some operatives, such as Hussein Mikdad, were Lebanese citizens

with fair complexions who traveled on false documents. Others, such as

Stephan Smyrek, a German convert to Islam, or Jihad Shuman, a British

citizen, traveled to Israel through Europe on their European passports.

 

More recently, FBI investigations revealed the amazing extent to which

Hezbollah forgers are producing counterfeit Euros and other European

currency. Another investigation exposed Hezbollah robberies around the world

and plans to launder and sell the stolen currency, including $2-million

worth of stolen Swedish Krona. Yet another case involved a dual

Lebanese-German citizen who used his Slovakian import-export company as a

front to procure weapons - including shoulder-fired anti-aircraft rockets -

for Hezbollah.

 

Given Hezbollah's long and sordid history in Europe, and the fact that it

now has resumed violent operations in Europe, what will it take to get EU

member states to agree to ban Hezbollah as the terrorist group it is? Last

summer, Cyprus' foreign minister pledged that "should there be tangible

evidence of Hezbollah engaging in acts of terrorism, the EU would consider

listing the organization." Now here we are, tangible evidence in hand: The

Burgas bombers traveled through Romania and Poland, the defendant in Cyprus

though France and the Netherlands.

 

Yet unlike the Netherlands and Canada, which have designated Hezbollah as a

terrorist group and proactively countered its terrorist activities, France

remains a holdout, effectively protecting it from any meaningful European

action. Perhaps Mr. Harper will take the opportunity to talk some sense into

his French counterpart on this important issue.

 

National Post

 

==========================================

(F)AIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this

message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to

these copyrighted items are reserved. Articles and graphics have been placed

within for educational and discussion purposes only, in compliance with

"Fair Use" criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976.

The principle of "Fair Use" was established as law by Section 107 of The

Copyright Act of 1976. "Fair Use" legally eliminates the need to obtain

permission or pay royalties for the use of previously copyrighted materials

if the purposes of display include "criticism, comment, news reporting,

teaching, scholarship, and research." Section 107 establishes four criteria

for determining whether the use of a work in any particular case qualifies

as a "fair use". A work used does not necessarily have to satisfy all four

criteria to qualify as an instance of "fair use". Rather, "fair use" is

determined by the overall extent to which the cited work does or does not

substantially satisfy the criteria in their totality. If you wish to use

copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you

must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

 

THIS DOCUMENT MAY CONTAIN COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. COPYING AND DISSEMINATION IS

PROHIBITED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNERS.