May 18, 2004
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent and Reuters

Lebanon has cracked a spy ring recruited by Israel to help assassinate the head of Hezbollah, a Lebanese newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Lebanese security forces have arrested a Palestinian woman in her forties who had been recruited by Israeli agents in Tunisia to establish a spy ring comprised of Arab workers in Lebanon, the As-Safir newspaper said in a front-page story.

A Lebanese security source said a plot of some kind had been uncovered but declined to comment on its details or scale while investigations were ongoing.

Lebanon's Public Prosecutor Adnan Addoum told Reuters agency that no such case had been referred to the judiciary and "this was media talk".

The newspaper said the woman, who lives in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon, had recruited an Egyptian man living in Beirut, who had also been arrested along with a lover she had unsuccessfully tried to bring into the ring.
The woman said she had then been asked to liaise between two cells plotting to kill Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, who heads Hezbollah, using high-grade explosives and a poison they planned to apply to clothing, it added. The woman told investigators that preparations for the killing were going well. "The operation had a 90 percent chance of success", the newspaper quoted her as saying.

The woman, who holds a Tunisian passport, had recently made several trips from Beirut to Tunisia where she met with Mossad Israeli intelligence agents who work for Israel's trade bureau in Tunisia, the report said.

Her contact person was known as Abad El-Hafiz, who arranged for her to work in a shoe factory in the city. Directed by a man called El-Hafiz, the woman said she had smuggled arms and drugs to Tunisia's neighboring countries.

The woman also admitted to undergoing arms and surveillance training. The report said that she was ordered to experiment at committing crimes in Tunisia, "in order to test her work". According to the newspaper the woman's criminal acts are currently being investigated in Tunisia.
As-Safir said the woman was arrested after a man she had unsuccessfully approached to join the ring warned the Lebanese group.

Lebanon has jailed some 30 people since December over a string of bomb attacks on American-style food outlets, foiled attacks on the fortress-like U.S. embassy on the edge of Beirut and alleged plots to assassinate U.S. ambassador Vincent Battle.

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/428975.html