How Hezbollah Trained an Operative to Spy on Israeli Tourists
by Sebastian Rotella
ProPublica, April 26, 2013, 1:58 p.m.
Hossam Yaakoub, right, a Lebanese-Swedish operative, is escorted by police
as he arrives at the court in Limassol on March 21, 2013. (Yiannis
Kourtoglou/AFP/Getty Images)
A rare inside look at Hezbollah during a recent terror trial in Cyprus
portrayed a militant group with the prowess of an intelligence service:
meticulous overseas reconnaissance, Western operatives with elaborate
covers, training at secret bases where recruits and instructors wear masks
for maximum security.
And the conviction last month of a confessed Hezbollah operative for doing
terrorist surveillance of Israeli tourists has heated up a debate that
continues to divide the West: Whether the European Union, like the United
States and Israel, should designate Hezbollah as a terrorist group.
In a report to be published by a West Point think tank next week, a former
U.S. counterterror official argues that the Cyprus case and an attack on
Israelis in Bulgaria last year show that Hezbollah has returned to
aggressive operations on European soil. Western counterterror agencies
largely share that analysis, which has spurred a proposal by Britain for the
European Union to designate Hezbollah's military wing as a terrorist
organization.
"In Cyprus you have a case that underwent full judicial scrutiny, and a
conviction in a European court," said Matthew Levitt, the report's author, a
former top Treasury Department intelligence official who is now a senior
fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "You have all this
evidence. You have a European Hezbollah operative who was also doing courier
work across Europe. What else do they need?"
Decisions in the 27-nation European Union move slowly through a bureaucratic
labyrinth, especially on diplomatically sensitive questions. But the current
debate departs from traditional European reluctance to confront a militant
group that is a powerhouse in the government and on the streets of Lebanon.
In Paris, Berlin and other capitals, the terrorist activity and Hezbollah's
military support for the Assad regime in Syria's civil war have challenged a
strategy of maintaining cordial relations with Hezbollah to prevent
retaliation and preserve diplomatic leverage.
"It has been and will be the most serious discussion on Hezbollah they've
had," said a U.S. counterterror official who requested anonymity because he
is not authorized to speak publicly. "Stability in Lebanon has been one of
the main European arguments for not designating Hezbollah. But when they see
what Hezbollah is doing Syria, which is exacerbating instability there and
creating spillover into Lebanon, causing instability there as well, it
changes this perspective."
On July 18 last year, the bombing of an airport bus carrying Israeli
tourists at the Bulgarian beach resort of Burgas killed six people.
Investigators said they identified two alleged Hezbollah operatives as
suspects, although little evidence has been made public.
The court verdict in Cyprus carries more weight in the legalistic European
Union. There are also parallels between the Burgas bombing and the
surveillance and potential targets described by Hossam Yaakoub, the
Lebanese-Swedish operative whom police in Cyprus arrested days before the
attack in Bulgaria. His statements are extraordinary because of the wealth
of detailed revelations about the inner workings of Hezbollah.
"The case provides unique insights into how (Hezbollah) recruits and trains
new operatives," Levitt writes in a case study of the Cyprus trial that will
appear Monday in the CTC Sentinel, a publication of the Combating Terrorism
Center at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point.
The military think tank provided ProPublica with an advance copy of the
article, "Hizb Allah Resurrected: the Party of God Returns to Tradecraft."
ProPublica separately obtained the 26 pages of depositions that Yaakoub, 24,
gave Cypriot police.
During the past decade, arrests, raids and infiltration by spy agencies have
produced a great deal of information about the operations, training camps
and leadership of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In contrast, Hezbollah remains a secretive, disciplined militant group with
worldwide reach and a vast war chest. Iran, a close ally, provides arms,
funds, training and strategic direction. Hezbollah's paramilitary
operations, social welfare work and political power have won a formidable
reputation in the Arab world and beyond. It is a militant group that
increasingly resembles a state entity.
"I believe in the armed struggle of Hezbollah until the liberation of
Lebanon," Yaakoub told his interrogators, according to the Cypriot police
depositions. "Hezbollah is the political party, which supports the people of
Lebanon and fights for the rights of our country . Although I believe in the
armed struggle for the liberation of Lebanon from Israel, I am not in favor
of the terrorist attacks against innocent people. For me, war and terrorism
are two different things."
A three-judge panel in Cyprus nonetheless found that Yaakoub was preparing
the terrain to attack Israeli tourists and other Jews on the island as part
of Hezbollah's holy war. The Cypriot police presumably received a tip about
him from Israeli intelligence, Levitt said, and followed him as he
documented and photographed flights arriving from Israel, buses transporting
Israeli tourists, kosher restaurants and other potential targets.
Step-by-Step Training
After his arrest last July 7, Yaakoub reacted with the practiced cool of a
well-trained operative, according to the depositions. He denied everything.
He explained that he was traveling with a Swedish passport because his
family had moved to Sweden six months after he was born and he had lived
there until he was 14. He described himself as a Beirut-based trader in
souvenirs, clothes and other merchandise. He backed up his story with
company documents and names of local clients.
As police confronted him with detailed evidence, however, his resistance
began to crumble. During an interrogation that began after midnight a week
after his arrest, he admitted the truth: "I am an active member of the
Hezbollah for about four years now. I was recruited by a Lebanese called
Reda in 2007. He told me that he needed me for the secret mission of
Hezbollah . my secret mission would be surveillance and undercover
activities."
Yaakoub fits a classic profile, according to Levitt and other experts.
Hezbollah takes advantage of the global Lebanese diaspora to recruit
operatives with Western passports. Bulgarian authorities, for instance, are
seeking two Lebanese suspects who traveled with authentic Australian and
Canadian passports - and fake U.S. driver licenses - in the airport bus
bombing last year.
Canadians, Swedes and Colombians of Lebanese descent have allegedly taken
part in past plots. And Yaakoub told police he trained in Lebanon alongside
a fighter who spoke English with an American accent, according to the
deposition.
The training began with five to seven months of lessons in tradecraft in
Beirut from an instructor named Yousef. He taught the recruit about cover
stories and clandestine operations, sending him at one point to deliver an
envelope to a man in Istanbul. Next came military training with pistols,
rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and C-4 explosives at secret camps in
south Lebanon. The sessions were designed for maximum operational security.
"They took me from different spots in Beirut, using closed vans so I could
not see," Yaakoub said, according to the deposition. "Each training group
consisted of 10-13 people. Both the trainees and instructors wore hoods, so
they could not recognize each other. We had individual tents and exercises
were performed in a separate place. It was forbidden to see each other."
Soon Hezbollah chiefs sent Yaakoub on courier missions to the French city of
Lyon and to Amsterdam, where he thought he recognized the voice of his
contact as one of his masked classmates from Beirut. The deployment of
Yaakoub in Europe coincides with a dangerous strategic shift by Hezbollah,
experts say.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Hezbollah and Iran conducted bombings, kidnappings
and hijackings on Israeli, American and European targets from Argentina to
Lebanon to France, inflicting hundreds of casualties. In the early 2000s,
the group curtailed operations outside the Middle East theater, focusing on
its struggle with Israel.
In 2010, however, leaders of Hezbollah and Iran launched an aggressive new
terror campaign. They wanted to retaliate against Israel for the
assassinations of Hezbollah warlord Imad Mughniyeh in 2008 and of Iranian
nuclear scientists in subsequent years, according to Western counterterror
officials.
"Even before the Burgas attack, we were growing concerned about what
Hezbollah is doing around the world," the U.S. counterterror official said.
"They are plotting in a way we hadn't seen since the 1990s. There is
certainly a feeling that Iran and Hezbollah have ramped up their networks."
Reactivating Terror Wing
Iran and Hezbollah decided on a new offensive in which the Quds Force, the
external operations wing of Iran's intelligence service, would hit hard
targets such as Israeli and Saudi diplomats, according to Levitt's article.
Hezbollah, meanwhile, would focus on Israeli tourists and other soft
targets, Levitt asserts, citing information from U.S., Israeli and European
security agencies.
As a result, Hezbollah revamped the Islamic Jihad Organization, its
international terrorist wing, according to Levitt.
"New operatives were recruited from the elite of (Hezbollah's) military wing
for intelligence and operational training, while existing IJO operatives
were moved into new positions," the article says. "At the same time, the IJO
invested in the development of capabilities and tradecraft that had withered
since the 2001 decision to rein in operations."
The past two years have brought a spate of attacks and plots. The Iranian
security forces are accused in cases including the assassination of a Saudi
diplomat in Pakistan, a bomb attack on an Israeli diplomat in India and a
foiled plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, D.C.
Alleged Hezbollah plots have been discovered as well. In January of last
year, Thai police found a warehouse full of bomb-making chemicals for an
alleged plot against Israeli targets. The chief suspect in that case
resembles Yaakoub: an accused Hezbollah operative with dual Lebanese and
Swedish citizenship.
Meanwhile, Yaakoub did patient undercover work in Cyprus, according to his
confession and evidence at his trial. Hezbollah provided expense money and a
salary of $600 a month. He burnished his cover story by registering his
import-export firm, looking into acquiring a warehouse, meeting with clients
and, on his handler's advice, developing a social life on the island.
Acting on instructions from Beirut, he watched Israeli tourists arrive on
flights and charted their movements on airport buses and at hotels, using
codes to disguise his notes and communicate with fellow operatives,
according to his confession.
The surveillance takes on ominous significance in light of the Burgas
attack, in which a young man with a backpack bomb blew up a bus as it picked
up Israeli tourists at the airport. The attacker died in the blast. European
investigators believe he was not a suicide bomber, but rather a dupe or the
victim of a premature explosion. Hezbollah has denied any role in Burgas.
Yaakoub's reconnaissance featured very specific tasks for reasons that are
not yet clear. He identified Internet cafes for his handlers. He obtained
three SIM cards for mobile phones. He meticulously studied an area behind a
hospital, taking photos and drawing a map.
"I am not aware of the organization's objectives on the matter, nor do I
know why they sent me to this mission," he told interrogators, according to
the deposition. Despite his confessions, he refused to accept that he was
involved in terrorism, declaring:
"It was just collecting information about the Jews, and that is what my
organization is doing everywhere in the world."
Reaction in Europe
The conviction of Yaakoub adds to mounting evidence of Hezbollah activity
across Europe. And it creates a headache for the European Union. Most
governments in Europe have a markedly different view of Hezbollah than
Israel or the United States, which see it as a terrorist organization pure
and simple. Only the Netherlands agrees with that assessment. Britain has
designated Hezbollah's military wing as a terror organization, but not the
political leadership.
The motives of other European governments vary. Especially on the left,
sectors of European political parties and public opinion tend to see
Hezbollah more favorably than Americans do. They accept the view that it is
a resistance movement, not a terrorist organization.
Nations such as Spain and Italy are also reluctant to confront the group
because they have military peacekeeping contingents in Lebanon that are
vulnerable to retaliation. In addition, key European powers such as France
and Germany described their relationships with Hezbollah on pragmatic
grounds.
French officials assert that if they designated Hezbollah as a terrorist
group, it would cut them off diplomatically from a powerful force in Lebanon
and the Middle East. Tensions between Hezbollah and Europe could further
destabilize the conflict-ridden political environment in Lebanon, the
argument goes.
The common wisdom has begun to change because of increasing exasperation
with Hezbollah's actions in Europe, signs of involvement in crime and
corruption, and its military role in Syria, experts say. Earlier this year,
British diplomats began to push their proposal that the EU label Hezbollah's
military wing a terrorist group.
This would curtail funding and political support for the group in Europe,
but maintain a channel for dialogue, British officials say. U.S. officials
and experts think there is no distinction between Hezbollah's political and
military leadership, but they think the proposal would be powerful and
timely.
"It would send a strong message," Levitt said.
The discussions about the proposal have intensified in the European Union in
recent weeks, according to U.S. and European officials. Political and
economic crises in Bulgaria and Cyprus have complicated matters, however,
because those countries were taking a lead role along with Britain.
"We have been pretty active on this issue," a senior British diplomat said.
"We are keen to do it. But it is a slow process."
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