Friday, April 26, 2013

How Hezbollah Trained an Operative to Spy on Israeli Tourists

 

How Hezbollah Trained an Operative to Spy on Israeli Tourists

 

by Sebastian Rotella

ProPublica, April 26, 2013, 1:58 p.m.

http://www.propublica.org/article/how-hezbollah-trained-an-operative-to-spy-on-israeli-tourists?utm_source=feedly

 

 

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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