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Swedish national charged with recruiting, gathering information for Hezbollah
A 55-year-old Swedish national was yesterday charged in an Israeli court with working on behalf of Lebanese Islamist terror organisation Hezbollah.
Hassan Halil Hizran, who was born in Lebanon to Palestinian refugees, moved to Sweden in the 1980s. He was arrested at Ben Gurion International Airport when he attempted to enter Israel on 21 July, as the Shin Bet internal security service had received prior intelligence on his intentions. A Shin Bet statement said that Hizran confessed during questioning to working for Hezbollah since 2009 and began recruiting Palestinians with European passports to enter Israel and gather intelligence. He was then tasked with recruiting Arab Israeli citizens, especially those with ties to Israelis, particularly military personnel and government officials.
The Shin Bet added that, “Additionally, he was asked to gather information on locations in Israel where there are concentrations of military forces, weapons, tanks and military bases.” He was also told to investigate the security procedures at Ben Gurion Airport. The Shin Bet assessed that, “The interest Hezbollah shows in military bases and military targets proves again that Hezbollah is preparing for the next war with Israel and is marking out these locations in its ‘target bank,’”
Hezbollah, which is heavily backed by Iran, controls much of southern Lebanon and although Israel’s border with Lebanon has been largely quiet since the month-long 2006 Second Lebanon War, Israeli officials have estimated that Hezbollah has approximately 100,000 rockets at its disposal, ten times the arsenal which Hamas controlled before Operation Protective Edge last summer.
Meanwhile, last month a Cypriot court sentenced a Hezbollah operative to six years in prison for his role in planning a bomb attack targeting Israeli interests on the island. Hezbollah’s determination to target Israeli citizens across the world was most brutally highlighted by an attack which saw a bus bomb in the Bulgarian resort of Burgas kill five Israeli tourists in 2012. A subsequent Bulgarian investigation concluded that Hezbollah was responsible for the attack.