Who Killed Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri?

[AlicetheKurious]

Note: Miqati brings a clear parliamentary majority to the opposition. The Hariri camp is going nuts, accusing Miqati of betraying his co-religionists (as barracuda predicted), and otherwise exposing their true colors by engaging in the basest sectarian incitement and thinly-veiled threats.

[barracuda]

Oh, I get it, you're trying to confuse me by going all reasonable and humble on me.

Yeah, watch out - it's a set up.

But honestly, what happened was I got a look at Hariri's list of concession requests and basically decided it would be literally impossible for a replacement PM or a different government to be any worse. And Hariri has again shown his true colors here by inciting his followers to violence and rejection of the Mikati premiership in the face of being outplayed by Nasrallah. Sore loser.

Now it would seem to be just a matter of time before the official denunciation and defunding of the STL.

[AlicetheKurious]

Now it would seem to be just a matter of time before the official denunciation and defunding of the STL.

Along with a veritable cocktail of threats, the Hariri camp are warning that if the Lebanese government decides to do this, Lebanon will receive the same treatment as Gaza (I suppose they prefer to be Ramallah).

But as Hassan Nasrallah has said, so many times, "Lebanon is not Gaza." (Neither is it Ramallah).

[AlicetheKurious]

After Hariri's declaration that Tuesday is a "Day of Rage", his supporters blocked several important roads with burning tires and garbage dumpsters. Sore loser indeed.

There were initial reports of minor violence, but now there are online reports by anonymous posters that armed Hariri supporters are swarming in several neighborhoods across Lebanon and that they've been shooting.

It's around quarter to one now; by morning there should be confirmed news.

[AlicetheKurious]

Black smoke from burning tires and torched cars billows over several cities in Lebanon, but most intensely in Tripoli. One of Lebanon's major highways (Tareeq al-Jadeed) is blocked by Future Movement protestors armed mainly with sticks and rocks. In Tripoli and the Bekaa Valley armed protestors are rioting and engaging in an orgy of property destruction; in Tripoli, a mob of hundreds has attacked the Al-Jazeera offices, set one of its cars on fire and trapped the terrified journalists inside. There are hundreds of crazed youths swarming over another Al-Jazeera vehicle, trying to roll it over to destroy it and attacking its satellite dish with sticks.

The opposition has stayed off the streets, but the Lebanese Army is trying to disperse the mobs and remove the road-blocks. In the Bekaa Valley, the Army has shot into the air but so far there are no reports that anybody has been physically harmed by either side.

Future Movement spokesman insist that while they had indeed called for a "Day of Rage", they meant only peaceful, silent demonstrations. They disclaim any responsibility for the violence and destruction (as though they hadn't been deliberately using every means possible to inflame sectarian hatred and provoke violence -- weasels). They have not lifted a finger to stop the rampage other than to hypocritically urge their minions to "exercise restraint".

Meanwhile, Najib Miqati has been confirmed as caretaker Prime Minister of Lebanon by a clear parliamentary majority.

Update: the rioters have set the entrance of the Al-Jazeera office building on fire; the journalists inside could be heard coughing and choking before communications were cut.

Update: communications have been reestablished with the journalists trapped in the Al-Jazeera office in Tripoli, but the journalists are still trapped.

Update: According to Al-Manar, Hariri supporters have also attacked two Lebanese television networks, NBN and OTV, and threw a hand-grenade at Lebanese Army soldiers in Beirut.

Note: Al-Manar reports that the "Day of Rage" was postponed for one hour due to the lack of demonstrators; the current rioters consist of a few hundred frenzied males, 20-40 years old. They make up in destructiveness what they lack in terms of numbers.

[barracuda]

Bumping.

STL indicts 4 Hezbollah members, seeks arrests


BEIRUT: A U.N.-backed court probing the 2005 assassination of statesman Rafik Hariri handed over Thursday the Lebanon portion of the indictment, which accused four Hezbollah members, State Prosecutor Saeed Mirza said.

“I will now examine the indictment and the warrants to take the appropriate measures,” Mirza told reporters following a meeting with a three-member delegation from the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL).

A judicial source told The Daily Star that the indictment identified the suspects as Mustafa Badreddine, Salim al-Ayyash, Hasan Aineysseh and Asad Sabra.

The STL Thursday officially confirmed the delivery of the indictment and accompanying arrest warrants to the Lebanese authorities, following a declaration by the Lebanese authorities that they received a confirmed indictment, a statement published by the STL said.

The statement also said that Pre-Trial Judge Daniel Fransen had confirmed the indictment on June 28.

“At this time, the STL has no comment on the identity or identities of the person or persons named in the indictment. Indeed, Judge Fransen has ruled that the indictment shall remain confidential in order to assist the Lebanese authorities in fulfilling their obligations to arrest the accused,” the statement, published hours after the delegation had ended its meeting with Mirza, said.

The confirmation of the indictment meant that Fransen was satisfied that there was prima facie evidence for this case to proceed to trial. The statement also said that this was not a verdict of guilt and any accused person was presumed innocent until proven guilty.

“Under the STL’s rules of procedure and evidence, the Lebanese authorities have to report to the STL on the measures that they have taken to arrest the accused, at least within 30 days of the submission of the indictment,” the statement said, adding that U.N. Security Council Resolution 1757 was clear on the steps to be taken by Lebanon regarding the arrest, detention, transfer of the accused to the STL.

The STL delegation handed over to Mirza the sealed indictment and arrest warrants for the four suspects during a meeting held at Mirza's office at the Justice Palace in Beirut before midday Thursday.
Hezbollah has denied involvement in the Hariri assassination and has described the international court as part of an "Israeli-American project,” aimed at targeting the resistance and sowing strife in the country.

Speaking to a local radio station during a break from talks at Baabda Palace, Minister of State of Administrative Affairs and Hezbollah member Mohammad Fneish said: “When we see the [STL] indictment, we will comment on it.”

Few hours later Hezbollah's al-Manar television said the indictments showed the tribunal seeking his killers "is politicised".

Badreddine is a cousin and a brother-in-law of Hezbollah’s slain commander Imad Mughniyeh, who was assassinated in Syria in 2008. Badreddine eventually replaced Mughniyeh as Hezbollah’s chief operations officer.

According to the indictment, Badreddine masterminded and supervised the plot to assassinate the Lebanese statesman while, Ayyash, 48, is alleged to have headed the cell that carried out the assassination of Hariri.

Lebanon, according to experts, now has 30 days to serve out the arrest warrants. If the suspects are not arrested within that period, the STL will then make public the indictment and summon the suspects to appear before the court.

And some excerpts from Nasrallah's response (full text at link):

Nasrallah Comments on the STL Indictments

8:39: Over the past year, we have suggested to the various authorities that they investigate the Israeli hypothesis [that Israel killed Hariri]. We held a major press conference and presented all kinds of evidence, involving drone footage, witness testimony, etc. We presented all this evidence and said: “Here you go. This constitutes a lead for you to pursue.” Did they follow it? No.

8:40: The evidence we presented is circumstantial, and it is enough to suspect Israel of the crime. But they didn’t even bother looking into it, let alone taking it seriously and building a case on it.

8:42: It’s not my job or the job of Hizbullah to launch an investigation and present evidence to Mr. Bellemare. But we did, and we found once again that there was no interest because this Tribunal is completely politicized.

8:43: In 2005, Mehlis admitted to Le Figaro that he was getting information from Israel. Rather than investigating Israel, this investigation has cooperated with Israel.

...

9:27: To the final subject: the current situation. To the Lebanese people, I say to them the following: don’t worry about civil strife. Those who talk about civil strife in Lebanon actually want that to come about. There will be no Sunni-Shiite strife, and no civil war in Lebanon. Everyone should be assured that we have a responsible government and trustworthy that will confront this situation effectively. So, to the Lebanese people, don’t worry. Everything is fine.

9:29: To the March 14 forces, I say the following. You consider yourself an opposition to PM Miqati’s government, and that is your right. If you think that the international game is aiding your fortunes, that’s also your right. I have, however, two pieces of advice for you, or let us say two thoughts (since you don’t like to be advised). (1) Don’t ask PM Miqati’s government to try to arrest the indicted individuals, because you wouldn’t be able to do it yourself even if you had a 100% March 14 government. Even if you held every single portfolio, you wouldn’t be able to arrest these individuals, so don’t expect PM Miqati to do it. (2) My second piece of advice is: Don’t demand that PM Miqati be less flexible than PM Hariri was with respect to the STL. The Foreign Ministers of Qatar and Turkey gave me a document that stated that Prime Minister Saad Hariri was ready to accept a certain set of demands (with respect to the STL). I can show you this document. So don’t expect PM Miqati to refuse demands about the STL that Saad al-Hariri accepted. That document was signed by the Qataris, Turks, Syrians, Saudis, and Saad al-Hariri, and we were told that Ms. Clinton was ready to bless the agreement as well.

9:37: To the supporters of the Resistance: there has been a war waged upon us for years. This is no surprise. We have always been prepared for it. Whether the war takes the form of military conflict or media wars or psychological war or whatever, we are prepared. The path of resistance has succeeded in liberating land, and defending our country. So we will confront this issue of the Tribunal just as we have confronted other issues.

9:42: There are people in Lebanon who want to see Sunni-Shiite strife, particularly some Christians in March 14. We will not succumb to this.

[solace]

Israel again. Where do they find the time?

[AlicetheKurious]

And some excerpts from Nasrallah's response (full text at link)

It was a very good speech, as usual. He methodically recapped the reasons why the Special Tribunal for Lebanon did not meet the minimal international standards for independence, professionalism and objectivity, and also presented documentation and videos: one was an official Israeli document listing the items that the Special Tribunal for Lebanon moved to Israel, including 97 of its computers. He noted that the STL had previously used Beirut's international airport or the Port of Beirut to transport its property to and from its headquarters in the Hague, so why was it transferring 97 computers (77 desktops and 20 laptops) to Israel, loaded with detailed intelligence gathered over years in Lebanon?

One of the videos showed the President of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, Antonio Cassese, being described by one of the speakers at the Herzliya Conference in Israel as "a great friend of Israel". Another, taken with a hidden camera, showed the Deputy Director of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, former German Intelligence operative Gerhard Lehmann, accepting a cash bribe. He said the video had been turned over to Judge Mehlis at the time, but it had never been investigated.

Of course, he brought up the infamous video that showed high-level officials of the STL coordinating with Saad al-Hariri the testimony of the later-exposed false witnesses. He described how the Special Tribunal for Lebanon had been plagued with major leaks since the very beginning. These leaks were never investigated, let alone stopped, indicating that they served someone's purpose: to defame certain targets -- first Syrian, then Lebanese, including the Resistance.

He pointed out how the "leaks" were conveniently timed in each case to skew or influence election results within Lebanon, in addition to serving the propaganda objectives of outside parties.

There was lots of other stuff, including a brief but very interesting report on the background of "former" CIA operative Robert Baer, a senior consultant to the STL, and his career in Lebanon, which included a car-bombing in 1985 that killed 87 people, including women and children, that Baer organized in revenge for the kidnapping and killing of CIA Station Chief William Buckley during the Civil War. An tv interview with Baer was also shown, in which he describes his dogged decades-long hunt for Senior Hizbullah official Imad Mughneya.

There were some humorous moments, such as when Sayyid Nasrallah described how some parties in Lebanon had blamed the Resistance for rejecting the STL's legitimacy in advance, before it completed its investigation or issued its indictment. They argued: "Let's wait for the STL's final report. We have eyes and ears and minds of our own, and we are perfectly capable of judging for ourselves whether the indictment presents hard, persuasive evidence." Smiling, he quoted these same parties now enthusiastically hailing the STL's indictment and treating its conclusions as fact, even though, as he said, the indictment presented no evidence at all, let alone "hard, persuasive evidence".

[barracuda]

Handing over these individuals to the Hague for trial would be a death sentence. Every western intelligence agency in the world would like to get their hands on these guys for "questioning", because Hezbollah is considered a terrorist organisation by these agencies, and these men are by definition of the imperial powers, terrorists. They'd never return to Lebanon no matter what the outcome of the trial, and these four would simply be the first in line to be requested.

I think I'm finally beginning to see that the political aspects of the investigation of the murder of Hariri are vastly disproportionate to the actual historical import of his death. As much as I still feel that no such crime could possibly be committed without at the very least the involvement and oversight of Hezbollah, what is happening here is less a search for the truth of the matter than a search for a grip on a political stranglehold on Hezbollah. The truth is a mere tertiary by-product, unimportant to the process.

The trial will doubtless proceed in absentia, with the outcome of the verdict to be used as a crowbar in an attempt to tear Lebanon down the middle.

[AlicetheKurious]

One quibble: I couldn't disagree more that Hezbullah had anything to do with the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri. First, no credible motive; second, the m.o. is all wrong; third, no evidence, at least so far. The Mossad has carried out numerous operations inside Lebanon, some of which were only discovered after the fact, including several assassinations of Hezbullah officials and allies. Hezbullah is quite amazing, but neither omniscient nor omnipotent.

On Edit: Sorry, I wrote the above at 2:38 AM last night, so wasn't as precise as I should have been. When I say "m.o." I refer to the fact that contrary to popular belief, unlike Israel, Hizbullah is not a terrorist organization, but a national resistance. It is Israel that typically assassinates individuals using characteristically humongous bombings that kill large numbers of civilians, almost always including many women and children. Hizbullah simply does not. Outside Palestine, the Israelis always, invariably, try to make it look like their enemies did it (even when the evidence says otherwise). They've been doing it at least since Menachem Begin and his crew disguised themselves "as Arabs" to carry out the bombing of the King David Hotel in the late 1940s. Unfortunately, the US does the same, they call it "collateral damage", but unlike Israel the US tends to take "credit".

[seemslikeadream]

Tribunal Concealed Evidence al-Qaeda Killed Hariri
by Gareth Porter, September 01, 2011

In focusing entirely on the alleged links between four Hezbollah activists and the 2005 bombing that killed Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the indictment issued by the Special Tribunal for Lebanon earlier this month has continued the practice of the U.N. investigation before it of refusing to acknowledge the much stronger evidence that an al-Qaeda cell was responsible for the assassination.

Several members of an al-Qaeda cell confessed in 2006 to having carried out the crime but later recanted their confessions, claiming they were tortured.

However, the transcript of one of the interrogations, which was published by a Beirut newspaper in 2007, shows that the testimony was being provided without coercion and that it suggested that al-Qaeda had indeed ordered the assassination.

But the United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission (UNIIIC) was determined to pin the crime either on Syria or its Lebanese ally Hezbollah and refused to pursue the al-Qaeda angle.

Detlev Mehlis, the first head of UNIIIC, was convinced from the beginning that Syrian military intelligence and its Lebanese allies had carried out the bombing and went to extraordinary lengths to link Ahmed Abu Adas, who had appeared in a videotape claiming responsibility for the assassination for a previously unknown group, to Syrian intelligence.

Violating the general rule that investigators do not reveal specific witness testimony outside an actual courtroom, Mehlis described testimony from “a number of sources, confidential and otherwise,” which he said “pointed to Abu Adas being used by Syria and Lebanese authorities as scapegoat for the crimes.”

Mehlis cited one witness who claimed to have seen Adas in the hallway outside the office of the director of Syrian intelligence in December 2004, and another who said Adas had been forced by the head of Syrian military intelligence to record the video in Damascus 15 days before the assassination and was then put in a Syrian prison.

Mehlis quoted a third witness, Zouheir Saddiq, as saying that Adas had changed his mind about carrying out the assassination on behalf of Syrian intelligence “at the last minute” and had been killed by the Syrians and his body put in the vehicle carrying the bomb.

The Mehlis effort to fit the Adas video into his narrative of Syrian responsibility for the killing of Hariri began to fall apart when the four “false witnesses” who had implicated Syrian and Lebanese intelligence in the assassination, including Saddiq, were discredited as fabricators.

Meanwhile, a major potential break in the case occurred when Lebanese authorities arrested 11 members of an al-Qaeda terrorist cell in late December 2005 and early January 2006.

The members of the cell quickly confessed to interrogators that they had planned and carried out the assassination of Hariri, The Daily Star reported June 6, 2008.

Obviously based in large part on the interrogation of the cell members, the Lebanese government wrote an internal report in 2006 saying that, at one point after the assassination, Ahmed Abu Adas had been living in the same apartment in Beirut as the “emir” of the al-Qaeda cell, Sheik Rashid.

The full text of the report was leaked to Al Hayat, which published it April 7, 2007.

The report said Rashid, whose real name was Hassan Muhammad Nab’a, had pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in 1999 and later to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq.

Rashid had also been involved in the “Dinniyeh Group,” which launched an armed attempt to create an Islamic mini-state in northern Lebanon in 2000, only to be crushed by 13,000 Lebanese troops.

The members of the al-Qaeda cell later retracted their confessions when they were tried by military courts in summer 2008 for “plotting to commit terrorist acts on Lebanese soil,” claiming that the confessions had been extracted under torture.

But the al-Qaeda cell members were being held by the Ministry of Interior, whose top officials had a political interest in suppressing the information obtained from them. The full transcript of the interrogation of one of the members of the cell was leaked to the Beirut daily Al Akhbar in October 2007 by an official who was unhappy with the ministry’s opposition to doing anything with the confessions.

The transcript shows that the testimony of at least one of the members contained information that could only have been known by someone who had been informed of details of the plot.

The testimony came from Faisal Akhbar, a Syrian carrying a Saudi passport who freely admitted being part of the al-Qaeda cell. He testified that Khaled Taha, a figure the U.N. commission later admitted was closely associated with Adas, had told him in early January 2005 that an order had been issued for the assassination of Hariri, and that he was to go to Syria to help Adas make a video on the group’s taking responsibility for the assassination.

Akhbar recalled that Sheikh Rashid had told him in Syria immediately after the assassination that it had been done because Hariri had signed the orders for the execution of al-Qaeda militants in Lebanon in 2004. Akbar also said he was told around Feb. 3, 2005, that a team of Lebanese al-Qaeda had been carrying out surveillance of Hariri since mid-January.

Akhbar also told interrogators some details that were clearly untrue, including the assertion that Abu Adas had actually died in the suicide mission. That was the idea that the cell had promoted in a note attached to the videotape Adas made.

When challenged on that point, Akhbar immediately admitted that a youth from Saudi Arabia, who had been sent by al-Qaeda, had been the suicide bomber. He acknowledged that Rashid had told him that, if detained, he was to inform the security services that he knew nothing about the subject of Abu Adas, and that he was to warn the other members of the cell to do likewise.

But the interrogator employed a trick question to establish whether Akhbar had actual knowledge of the assassination plot or not. He gave the al-Qaeda cadre a list of 11 phone numbers, four of which were fake numbers, and asked him if he remembered which ones were used in the preparations for the assassination.

Akhbar immediately corrected the interrogator, saying there had only been seven numbers used in the preparations for the assassination, including the five members of the surveillance team. That response corresponded with the information the investigation had already obtained, and which had not been reported in the news media.

The response of UNIIIC, under its new chief, Belgian Serge Brammertz, to the unfolding of an entirely different narrative surrounding the assassination was to shift the focus away from the question of who were the actual perpetrators of the bombing.

In his March 2006 report, Brammertz said the “priority” of UNIIIC was being given not to the team that carried out the assassination but to those who ‘enabled’ the crime.

And Brammertz had still not abandoned the story originally planted by the false witnesses in 2005 that the role of Adas in making the videotape had been manipulated by Syrian intelligence.

In his June 2006 report, Brammertz said the Commission continued to entertain the idea that whoever detonated the bomb may have been “coerced into doing so.” And in the September 2006 report, he suggested that Adas may have been coerced into delivering the videotape, just as Mehlis had suggested in 2005.

Despite the official Lebanese government report confirming it, Brammertz never publicly acknowledged that Adas was deeply involved with an al-Qaeda cell, much less that its members had confessed to the killing of Hariri.

Daniel Bellemare, the prosecutor for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, similarly chose not to pursue that evidence, which directly contradicts the assertion in his indictment that it was a Hezbollah operative — not al-Qaeda — who had convinced Adas to make the videotape.

(Inter Press Service)

[AlicetheKurious]

Lebanon's intelligence war
With reports of the CIA shutting down in Beirut, Al Jazeera explores the extent of intelligence infiltration in Lebanon.
Nour Samaha Last Modified: 01 Dec 2011 11:33


In Lebanon, electronic devices and spyware have been found on individuals charged with spying for Israel [EPA]

Beirut, Lebanon - The confirmation by officials in the United States of the exposure of their CIA informants in Lebanon has caused a flurry of excitement in both the local and international media in recent days, adding yet another chapter to intelligence activities on Lebanese soil.

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah revealed in a press conference in June 2011 that the Lebanese Shia resistance movement had discovered and arrested at least two of its members, whom Nasrallah said were working for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Although the US embassy denied the story at the time, unnamed US government officials recanted and confirmed the arrests last week. Media reports claim that the intelligence agency has gone so far as to shut down its Beirut bureau after it was compromised by Hezbollah's announcement.

The intelligence war playing out in Lebanon is nothing new, however. For decades now, intelligence agencies have been infiltrating the country, with up to 70 suspected spies arrested by the Lebanese authorities in 2009 and 2010 alone.

Cash payments for telecoms data

One of Lebanon's most vulnerable infiltration targets has been its telecommunications network. In 2010, Charbel Qazzi and Tarek Rabaa, both telecom engineers with Alfa (one of Lebanon's two mobile network operators), were arrested within weeks of each other and charged with spying for Israel.

Qazzi, a senior technician at the time, had access to all the passwords necessary to access the mobile network computer systems, both remotely and onsite, which he confessed to handing over to the Israelis. He said he was first contacted by Mossad in the 1990s, when he snuck across the border to consult with an Israeli doctor over a medical case concerning a relative of his.

He was charged with "entering enemy territory, collaborating with Israel, and providing it with information".

According to media reports quoting security officials, Rabaa, a transmission engineer for Alfa, was first contacted by the Israeli intelligence services when they posed as an international recruitment company in 2001. Following an "interview" in Cyprus, they asked him to complete a "case study" on the telecom network. A few months later in 2002, they contacted Rabaa again and asked him to perform a polygraph test, which he apparently failed. They re-established contact again in 2005, and conducted a series of meetings with him in countries all over the world, including Thailand, France, Denmark, Turkey and the Czech Republic, until Rabaa was arrested in 2010.

In these meetings he was given cash payments ranging from $2,000 to $20,000, depending on the information he gave them. This included a map of the Lebanese mobile network backbone, the names of every employee at the company, and a study of the network in the southern part of the country, which borders Israel.

"With knowledge of the network backbone, they know the geographical location of the nodes in the network and the type of equipment used. They would know where to orient their monitoring equipment, break the encryption codes, and eavesdrop on the network," Marwan Taher, a computer engineer, told Al Jazeera.

"He was gathering everything you could ever imagine about the Lebanese cellular network."

- Hassan Illeik

In one meeting held in Turkey in 2009, news agency reports claim Rabaa told his handlers that Alfa was in talks with a Chinese company to procure equipment to use in expanding the network in Lebanon's south. His handlers stressed upon him the need to maintain the current supplier of telecom equipment, a European company, as it would be more difficult to compromise the Chinese equipment than the European one. Rabaa was one of the major players who convinced Alfa to stay with the European company.

"He was gathering everything you could ever imagine about the Lebanese cellular network," Hassan Illeik, a journalist with the Lebanese daily Al Akhbar, who has been closely following the issue of Israeli infiltration, told Al Jazeera. "The location of all the antennas, all of the information on the base transceiver stations (BTS), all of the passwords he could access, all the information about the new technology being installed in the cell networks and the maps for the Lebanese mobile networks backbone."

Rabaa continues to maintain that while he knew he was working for an intelligence agency, he insisted he was working for NATO. His family claims that Rabaa was forced to confess under torture.

"The Lebanese intelligence services know the ways in which the Americans, NATO, the French, Danish, whichever intelligence agencies work in Lebanon, and when they want to meet their spies, they do so in Lebanon," said Illeik. "They don't go to Thailand to meet their spies. The Israelis always ask their spies to go abroad, like Cyprus, Italy, Czech Republic, Turkey, to hold meetings."

Charbel Nahhas, former minister of telecoms, said in a press conference at the time that "this was the most dangerous espionage act in Lebanese history".

"Qazzi and Rabaa are not the only guys working in telecoms and 'allegedly' working for Israelis," said Illeik. "These are only two of a much bigger pool."

Others include a retired general and his wife who worked for the Israelis between 1994 and 2009, and whose house was a treasure trove of spying devices and gadgets. He confessed to providing Israel with a number of newly-purchased Lebanese SIM cards (to then redistribute in Lebanon), among other sensitive information.

Then there was the software engineer who, up until his arrest four months ago worked in the private sector with a number of banks, and had helped set up the DSL network in Lebanon. Like Rabaa, he claims he was contacted by an "international recruitment company" and asked to complete a "case study" before partaking in numerous meetings between 2002 and 2006.

"The Israelis don't think the Lebanese are intelligent enough to discover their infiltration," said Illeik. "You can see this in their rhetoric. When they get caught they think it's because of their failure, not because of their enemy's sophistication."

Root passwords and remote access

Methods of infiltration include the tampering of BTS towers, either physically or remotely; using firewall equipment manufactured by Israeli companies, which allows Israel to install backdoors and access for remote log-ins.

"A backdoor is a hidden mechanism that provides access to computer systems which bypasses security checks like passwords," explained Taher.

"If you go to the Lebanese border with Israel, you can see all the telecoms centres from their side," said Illeik. "Last year, Lebanese engineers checked all of these points and uncovered a large amount of Israeli equipment just on the border oriented specifically to the backbone of the Lebanese network."

During the 2006 war, engineers at Alfa noticed unusual activity in their servers; the log, which registers every call and SMS sent from cell phones, would restart itself on a daily basis, without any command ordering it to do so. Furthermore, the log would reboot itself before registering where the command originated from.

According to Illeik, "the engineers in Alfa were seeing this happen in front of their eyes, and couldn’t do anything to stop it".

"If [the spies] gave the root passwords to the Israelis, all bets are off. This would allow the Israelis to log onto the computer systems controlling the networks as administrators," explained Taher. "At that level of control, they can access and modify data, install software programmes, shut down or re-set the different systems, as well as modify or erase any audit logs that would record their actions."

In 2010, the International Telecommunication Union - an agency of the United Nations focused on information and communication technologies - passed a resolution recognising "that Lebanon's telecommunication facilities have been and are still being subjected to piracy, interference and interruption, and sedition by Israel against Lebanon's fixed and cellular telephone networks", condemning the attacks as harmful to Lebanon's national security.

Sascha Meinrath, director of the New America Foundation's Open Technology Initiative, told Al Jazeera that it is "quite feasible" to access a mobile operating centre remotely, thus able to install backdoors, install software to monitor or manipulate phone calls.

"We know that it is relatively simple to do real-time surveillance of text messaging and even block texts based upon key words as a third party," he said. "Part of the problem is that we are still learning about just how insecure GSM [technologies for second generation cell networks] systems actually are, and there are almost no meaningful mandates from regulators and legislators to make them meaningfully secure."

"Once one has physical access to the system, it's relatively trivial to break into many of these systems," he continued. "One can both renumber systems as well as change the records of call details once you have access to these databases; likewise you can check and change affiliations of phone numbers, such as change the names associated with numbers, change the numbers associated with IMEIs [unique identification codes that verifies a mobile device]."

'Twinning' Hezbollah and forging calls

In 2009, Hezbollah handed over three of their own members to the Lebanese security services after they were suspected by the party of spying. An investigation revealed their phones had been installed with a software programme which allowed a second line to be linked to their phones.

Intelligence officials discovered that when they switched off the tampered phones, two lines would disappear from the network, and when switched on again, two lines would reappear, even though only one SIM card was actually installed in the phone.

The purpose of "twinning" is to allow third parties to remotely access the data records of the phone, trace its location and eavesdrop on conversations in the vicinity of the phone, regardless of whether the phone is switched on or off.

"The benefits would allow you to eavesdrop on the phone communications," said Taher. "If you can also activate the hands-free, you can listen in on what is going on in the room, even when there is no phone call being placed on the phone, so it's an open mike on your target the whole time."

Recently, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon - an international court charged with investigating the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri - released an indictment for four Hezbollah members, relying on telecom data gathered in Lebanon as its primary source of evidence.

Yet as a result of the level of infiltration by a number of intelligence agencies into the Lebanese telecommunications network, many, including government officials, find the evidence presented to be compromised.

At a press conference held in August this year, Imad Hoballah, head of Lebanon's Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, emphasised the vulnerability of the Lebanese telecom network precisely because of the extent of infiltration that had been uncovered.

"Having personally examined the [Hezbollah members'] phones which were penetrated by Israeli intelligence [in 2009], which was scientifically proven with the assistance of the mobile phone company involved, it goes to show the Israelis are capable of planting another phone line onto a handset... which allows for eavesdropping and misleading investigators," said Hoballah.

"We would like to remind people that the age-old hacking of the phone network by the Israelis is something we have proven repeatedly..."

- Mohammad Ayoub

According to Mohammad Ayoub, a senior engineer at the TRA, it is possible to not only "twin" phone lines, but to forge phone calls too. "This can be done not only by fabricating the call data record, but by using advanced technology, such as forging a person's voice," he said at the press conference. "We would like to remind people that the age-old hacking of the phone network by the Israelis is something we have proven repeatedly and certified by one of the largest telecommunication organisations [ITU]."

Ayoub went on to describe other manners of infiltration, which include the installation of software onto the cellular network system in order to modify the data "which can be done in real-time and in secret".

"The Israeli agents that were caught at Alfa do have the passwords to control the network," he said, adding that the manipulation of data can also be carried out on back-up copies, and even if the phones are switched off.

Still no protection

According to Illeik, little has been done to protect the Lebanese telecommunications networks despite the discovery of the levels of infiltration.

"They cannot stop the Israelis 100 per cent," he said. "But it is also in the Lebanese mentality that it would be too expensive to try and put a full stop to the infiltration."

For Taher, from the technical aspect there is no reason why this has not yet been done. "I would expect countries to be eavesdropping on other countries' communications," he said. "But I would also expect countries to be safeguarding their equipment as a matter of national security, especially after it had been infiltrated."

While he is not surprised by the level of penetration into the network, he is surprised by the lack of adequate measures taken to respond to the situation. "But given the vulnerabilities in the network, and given the lack of seriousness with which security has been taken by the Lebanese governments in the past, plus the level of sophistication of the Israelis, then I'm not surprised," he said.

There are no physical safeguards on the BTS towers, and despite the level of penetration in Alfa, the computer systems have yet to be taken offline for forensic examination, he added.

"There seems to be a lack of understanding or appreciation by decisions makers on this issue to realise the security implications of this type of information," said Taher. Link