Hezbollah deputy chief acknowledges party busted Israeli spy

BEIRUT: Hezbollah’s deputy chief implied Sunday that news of the arrest of a senior party official over espionage for Israel was true.

“There is no party in the world as big and sophisticated as Hezbollah that was able to stand with the same steadfastness despite some major infiltrations,” Naim Qassem told Hezbollah’s An-Nour radio station.

“Hezbollah has worked intensely on battling espionage among its ranks and in its entourage. Some cases [of espionage] surfaced, and they are very limited cases,” he said, without explicitly calling suspected spy Mohammad Shawraba by name.

Sources told The Daily Star last month that Hezbollah has put Shawraba on trial for spying for Israel.

Formerly the head of the party’s so-called External Operations Unit, Shawraba is being tried for treason among four others who worked in the unit.

The senior official reportedly offered Israel information that allowed it to thwart a number of attacks that were intended to serve as revenge for the 2008 assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah’s former military commander.

Qassem said the party strives to uphold the notion of “purity,” but acknowledged that Hezbollah is made up of human beings and is thus prone to mistakes.

He added that the party is capable of containing the consequences of espionage.