Hezbollah (54 page)

Ayub’s arrest remained secret until late October 2002, when his trial was set to begin. In custody, Ayub reportedly admitted that part of his mission was to free the three key Shi’a militants discussed before—Mustafa Dirani, Abdel Karim Obeid, and Jihad Shuman—perhaps by kidnapping Israelis and bargaining for their release in exchange for the detained Hezbollah operatives.
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On the stand, Ayub testified in February 2003 that he saw himself as being on a divine mission: “You want to know the reason I came here? I came here by an order from God. This is my religion. To defend the oppressed.”
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But one official, who questioned Ayub for several hours, concluded he was a “classic sleeper agent.”
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Ayub’s arrest and interrogation led Israeli authorities to amplify their intelligence collection focused on Hezbollah’s terrorist activities in the Israeli heartland. Between this intelligence collection effort and the investigation and interrogation of Ayub, Israeli security officials maintained they were able to uncover and thwart still more Hezbollah operations in Israel.
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Eleven months after his court testimony, Ayub landed in Germany on a flight from Israel as part of the Tannenbaum prisoner exchange. From there he flew to Beirut, where Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah waited on the tarmac to greet and embrace him.
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Even as Hezbollah handlers kept in regular contact with Fawzi Ayub—at least until his arrest in Hebron—they trained and dispatched another operative on a parallel infiltration mission to Israel. Jihad Aya Latif Shuman, a dual Lebanese-British citizen and graduate of the American University of Beirut with a degree in computer sciences, made his way to Israel from Beirut through London, where he benefited from the support of a Hezbollah facilitation network there. He arrived in Israel on New Year’s Eve 2001, traveling on an authentic British passport bearing the name Gerard Shuman. He was arrested just six days later near the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem.
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Shuman was reportedly born to Lebanese parents in Sierra Leone in 1969 and inherited British citizenship from his father. Years later, Hezbollah’s IJO recruiters saw in Shuman not just a run-of-the-mill candidate for recruitment but someone with a valid British passport who had lived abroad and could pass as a foreigner. His initial recruitment occurred on a visit to Lebanon, but at least some of the recruitment process and initial training reportedly took place during visits to his new Hezbollah handlers in Malaysia.
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Shuman moved to Jouaiya, Lebanon, near Tyre, and studied at the American University of Beirut. While in Lebanon, Shuman would later concede, he was trained by Mughniyeh’s international operations group to execute “strategic attacks,” as Hezbollah described them.
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When he was deemed ready, Shuman was sent from Lebanon to Britain on his Lebanese passport.
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Following the instructions he received in Lebanon, once Shuman arrived in London he left his Lebanese passport in a hidden dead drop located in a public place.
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According to the British government, Hezbollah maintains “a small, overt” presence
in the United Kingdom, “with extensive links to Hizballah’s Foreign Relations Department (FRD),” the department responsible for overseeing the group’s organized political, financial, and procurement efforts abroad. Beyond this overt presence, however, “there is some indication of occasional ESO [IJO] activity in the UK,” a British government report notes.
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Hezbollah engages in fund-raising and propaganda activities in the United Kingdom, though its fund-raising there is fairly small compared with its fund-raising in North and South America, Africa, and elsewhere in Europe. According to an Israeli report, Hezbollah raises tens of thousands of dollars a year in Britain.
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British experts say the Hezbollah presence in Britain includes not only fund-raising networks but also trained operatives ready to be called upon to support Hezbollah operations or even carry out revenge attacks in the West. Richard Kemp, a senior counterterrorism adviser to former Prime Minister Tony Blair and a member of the Cabinet Office’s Joint Intelligence Committee, warned that “Hezbollah cells are operating in this country, in London. The big question is how capable Hezbollah groups are in Europe. What I can say is that Hezbollah is probably the world’s most effective terrorist organization, and that includes al Qaeda.”
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Iran has a record of dispatching terrorists, particularly Hezbollah members, to conduct attacks in or from Britain. Back in 1989, Mustafa Maza, a Hezbollah operative staying in a London hotel, was killed when explosives he was carrying in his suitcase detonated prematurely.
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According to the Argentine indictment in the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) bombing, Iran and Hezbollah may have played a role in a pair of London bombings perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists on July 26 and 27, 1994, just days after the AMIA strike.
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In 2003, British intelligence officials assessed that Hezbollah’s political activity in Lebanon and the group’s attempts to engage politically with European countries—including Britain—could lessen the likelihood of a Hezbollah attack in Europe. (In late May 2003, for example, Hezbollah parliamentarian Muhammad Fanish visited Britain, Switzerland, and Italy.)
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In the event Hezbollah did plot an attack, however, British officials assess it would be a targeted attack against an Israeli official or institution, not an indiscriminate bombing.
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In the case of Shuman’s infiltration operation, Hezbollah’s London network needed only to provide basic logistical support for an attack planned not for the streets of London but for the streets of Jerusalem. Shuman’s operational instructions in London were very clear and were intended to bolster his cover story before his travel to Israel on his British passport. He was told to rent an apartment in London, set up a voice mailbox there in case anyone called, and purchase a British cell phone. Having established these supports for his cover story, he purchased a plane ticket at a travel agency that allowed him to pay in cash.
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Shuman arrived in Israel on December 31, 2000. On arrival in Jerusalem, he checked in to the Novotel on the Arab side of Jerusalem’s Route 60 north, a parkway leading out of the city and dividing its Arab eastern and Jewish western neighborhoods. Before he departed for Israel, Shuman’s instructors made him memorize the location of dead drops in East Jerusalem’s Wadi Joz neighborhood,
which is located between Mount Scopus and the Old City. Soon after he checked into the Novotel, Shuman made his way to the dead drop and began digging. It is not clear if Shuman found what he was looking for—likely weapons, explosives, or preoperational surveillance information. He soon moved several blocks away, to the Dan Panorama, a hotel in West Jerusalem overlooking the walls of the Old City.
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Shuman later confessed to Israeli authorities that he called his Hezbollah handlers in Lebanon regularly to update them on his progress. That progress, however, was short-lived: on January 5, six days after arriving in the country, Shuman was arrested just 300 meters from the prime minister’s Jerusalem residence.
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At the time of his arrest Shuman carried Sierra Leonean travel documents along with his British passport.
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A search of the items in his possession revealed Shuman had a
kippah
(a skullcap, often employed by terrorists to blend into Israeli society), a timer that could have been used for an explosive device, maps of Jerusalem, a large sum of money, a video camera, two disposable cameras, and several cellular phones purchased in Israel.
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Even as Hezbollah invested heavily in Palestinian terrorist networks, the group continued to recruit its own operatives to target Israel, often leveraging its foreign operations capabilities to that end. Israeli Arabs were of particular interest to Qais Obeid, especially following the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000, though earlier, in the late 1990s and early 2000, Hezbollah had focused on recruiting Israeli Arabs. Back then the group expressed particular interest in members of Israel’s Bedouin communities, whose mobility provided an attractive cover for movement around the country. Both before and after 2000, Hezbollah focused on Israeli Arabs with clean security records.
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With the Israeli occupation of Lebanon over, Hezbollah lost its primary justification for maintaining its armed militia in continued and explicit violation of the Taif Accord, which ended the Lebanese civil war. Refocusing its effort on liberating a few disputed hilltops like the Shebaa Farms (determined by the UN to actually be in Syrian, not Lebanese, territory) could not suffice to maintain a culture of resistance and martyrdom. This explains Hezbollah’s fixation on carrying out cross-border military attacks and its support for terrorism targeting Israel since 2000. Seeking much-needed intelligence and operational support networks south of the border, Hezbollah found Israeli Arabs “an especially attractive target for recruitment and handling,” according to Israeli security sources.
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As full citizens of Israel, Israeli Arab operatives enjoyed complete freedom of movement throughout Israel, enabling them to collect information on strategic locations, critical infrastructure, traffic arteries, and Israeli cities and towns. Beyond luring Jewish and Arab Israeli citizens into drugs for intelligence schemes, Hezbollah endeavored to spot and approach Israeli Arabs staying abroad for recruitment. Sometimes individuals would be considered based on their statements
and political positions, whereas other times Hezbollah recruited on a “friend brings a friend” basis.
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Investigation into one such case led Israeli authorities to arrest Khalid Kashkoush, an Israeli Arab medical student from the Qalansua, an Arab city in central Israel, as he landed at Ben Gurion Airport in July 2008. Kashkoush had been studying in Göttingen, Germany, where a relative introduced him to a Lebanese doctor named Hisham Hassan, who headed the Orphaned Children Project Lebanon. Dr. Hassan, Israeli authorities charged, had spotted Kashkoush and put him in touch with a Hezbollah handler. German authorities were likely not surprised by the allegations, given that several German intelligence offices, among other government authorities, publicly identified the Orphaned Children Project’s ties to Hezbollah and Hezbollah’s Martyrs Foundation. Among these offices were those located in Baden-Württemberg and Bremen.
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Until the German government shut it down in 2002, the Martyrs Foundation operated in Germany as the al-Shahid Social Relief Institution.
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The US Treasury Department followed suit in July 2007, designating the Martyrs Foundation (including its US office, the Goodwill Charitable Organization) as a terrorist entity. Senior Martyrs Foundation officials were not only involved in fundraising for Hezbollah, according to the Treasury Department; they were also “directly involved in Hizballah operations against Israel during the July–August 2006 conflict.” In fact, Treasury noted, “a Lebanon-based leader of the Martyrs Foundation has directed and financed terrorist cells in the Gaza Strip that worked with Hizballah and PIJ.”
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The Orphans Project website was not coy about its ties to the Martyrs Foundation: The site informed donors that the funds it raised were directly transferred to the Lebanese Martyrs Foundation’s bank account.
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According to Israeli authorities, Kashkoush would meet Dr. Hisham several times after their introduction in 2002. After a few meetings, Hisham suggested Kashkoush establish a business relationship with someone he called Rami. In December 2005, Kashkoush met Rami in Erfurt, Germany, where Kashkoush was instructed to buy a “clean” phone and to set future meetings by email. Rami, who identified himself now as Mazen, was actually Mohamad Hashem, an “experienced Hezbollah senior handler.” According to Israeli officials, “Mohamad Hashem frequently visits in various countries for meetings with Hizbullah agents to give instructions and money and receive information.”
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Kashkoush and Hashem met several times over the next couple of years, including in Erfurt in December 2006 and in Frankfurt in April 2007 and January 2008. Hashem asked for the names of other Israeli citizens studying abroad who might be possible targets for recruitment by Hezbollah. He also asked Kashkoush to supply information to Hezbollah about Israel and to identify addresses and public buildings in Qalansua on Google Earth maps. Moreover, he was told to try to get a job at an Israeli hospital, where he could collect information on hospitalized members of the Israeli security forces. He was given basic security training and paid €13,000 for his activities on behalf of Hezbollah. Once arrested, Kashkoush reportedly informed
Israeli authorities not only about his recruitment by Mohamad Hashem but also about the activities of another Hezbollah agent, Ayman Kamel Shihadeh, a Palestinian from Hebron who had already been the target of the Shin Bet’s attention for his association with Hezbollah.
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One event that, interestingly, shook Kashkoush was the August 2009 arrest of Rawi Sultani, another Israeli Arab, on charges of spying for Hezbollah. A resident of Tira, a town just seven miles from Kashkoush’s home in Qalansua, Sultani also lived near the home of then–IDF chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi. Recruited by a Hezbollah speaker at a summer camp in Morocco run by the Israeli Arab Balad (National Democratic Assembly) Party, Sultani informed officials that he and the Israeli chief of staff worked out at the same gym.
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Keen to exact revenge for the previous year’s assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, the Hezbollah recruiter—Salman Harb—asked Sultani for detailed information on Ashkenazi. Hezbollah had hoped to target a current or former senior Israeli official, someone roughly equal in rank and importance to Hezbollah’s Mughniyeh. The sitting chief of staff made for a particularly attractive target.
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Hezbollah had been gunning for Ashkenazi for years. Six years earlier, IDF Lt. Col. Omar al-Heib, a Bedouin tracker who lost an eye in an explosion in 1996 while on an IDF mission in Lebanon, was charged with espionage for providing Hezbollah with details about Israeli military installations in general and about General Ashkenazi, then head of Israel’s Northern Command, in particular. Sentencing al-Heib to fifteen years in jail, a Tel Aviv court concluded that in return for drugs and money, al-Heib, a senior IDF officer, willingly supplied information to Hezbollah.
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