Rattled by slaying of Hamas figure in Dubai, Lebanese Hezbollah steps up security measures

Hezbollah ups security after Hamas Dubai slaying

BEIRUT — Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group has beefed up security measures following January’s killing of a top Hamas operative in Dubai and openly asked Lebanese authorities to tighten border controls against would be assassins.

Dubai police say a 26-member hit team carrying forged foreign passports, including British, French and Australian ones, killed Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in his hotel room in January.

Dubai authorities have blamed Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency for the assassination.

“We call upon Lebanese security agencies to follow and monitor any person carrying a European passport and to deal with him as a potential spy,” Hezbollah legislator Nawaf al-Moussawi said in a televised interview Monday.

Lebanon is in a state of war with Israel and Israeli citizens and travelers with Israeli stamps on their passports are not allowed to enter.

Hezbollah, which has fought Israeli forces since the early 1980s, has had several of its top members killed, allegedly by the Israelis and in 2006, the group fought a 34-day against Israel.

While a powerful force in the country, Hezbollah does not control the nation’s borders, airport and ports and must rely on the government.

A government security official said that new measures had already been taken to guard against possible infiltration by Israelis using forged European passports, though he did not elaborate any further.

A Hezbollah official, for his part, said that while the group had complete confidence in government security agencies, it has boosted its own security measures as well.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

It is not uncommon for Hezbollah operatives to briefly detain foreigners walking in southern Beirut area known as Dahiyeh, where the group’s headquarters are. In the past, Israeli journalists, using foreign passports, have entered the country and reported from Lebanon.

Local and foreign journalists who want to report in Hezbollah’s strongholds need special permission and escorts from the group.

Maj. Gen. Waffiq Jizzini, head of the Directorate of General Security, said the data of any person arriving in the country with a Jewish-sounding surname is sent up to the head office where it is checked on.

“We follow up on the person arriving and those receiving him,” the general told Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV station.

Israel’s spy service has been suspected of assassinating Hezbollah commanders for more than two decades.

Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah has rarely appeared in public since the 2006 war. In a very rare move, he traveled to neighboring Syria last week to meet the Syrian and Iranian presidents.

In 1992, Israeli helicopter gunships ambushed the motorcade of Nasrallah’s predecessor Sheik Abbas Musawi, killing him, his wife, 5-year-old son and four bodyguards. Eight years earlier Hezbollah leader Sheik Ragheb Harb was gunned down in south Lebanon.

But one of the biggest blows for the group came two years ago when Imad Mughniyeh, a top Hezbollah military commander, was killed by a bomb that ripped through his car in Damascus.

Hezbollah’s deputy leader Sheik Naim Kassem said after al-Mabhouh’s killing that “people coming on European passports might pose a danger in Lebanon.”

“Special measures should be taken to protect Lebanese citizens,” Kassem said.