Hizbollah members 'confess to spying for CIA'

Telegraph

Hassan Nasrallah

Hizbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Friday announced that members of his militant movement had confessed to being CIA agents and accused arch-foe Israel of turning to the US spy agency when it failed to infiltrate his Iran-backed party.

In the first such acknowledgement of infiltration since the group's founding in the 1980s, Nasrallah refused to disclose the identities of the two party members but said a third case was under investigation, slamming the US embassy in Lebanon as a "den of spies."

"When the Israeli enemy failed to infiltrate Hizbollah, it turned to the most powerful intelligence agency," Nasrallah said in a television speech broadcast in Lebanon, referring to the Central Intelligence Agency.

"Our investigation has found that ... intelligence officers (in the CIA) have recruited two of our members separately, whom we shall not name out of respect for the privacy of their families," he added.

"The first confessed he was recruited five months ago ... while the second confessed he had been recruited even before that," he said, adding that the recruiters were CIA agents posing as diplomats at the US embassy east of Beirut.

Hezbollah 'captures CIA spies'

Al Jazeera

Leader Hassan Nasrallah says three spies were arrested among its members, two of whom allegedly recruited by the CIA.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah says the group has captured three spies among its members, two of whom were recruited by the US Central Intelligence Agency.

The spies, one of whom was recruited five months ago, did not pose a serious threat to the movement or its military capabilities, Nasrallah said in a televised speech on Friday.

"None of these three cases are within the first line of senior leadership. They were not in positions of sensitive responsibility ... it is impossible to touch the military and security infrastructure of the resistance and its ability to confront," he said.

But a spokesman for the US embassy in Beirut told the AFP news agency that the charges were "empty accusations".

"There is no substance to his accusation," the spokesman said. "It appears as if Nasrallah was addressing internal problems within Hezbollah with which we have nothing to do."

Nasrallah said the CIA agents who hired the spies had diplomatic protection from the US embassy in Beirut and accused the CIA of recruiting the spies on behalf of Israel.