Imad Amhaz was temporarily residing in the small coastal town of Batroun in northern Lebanon, near the maritime navigation training institute where he was enrolled, according to his family. Friday 1is November, at dawn, while the night was still thick, according to what the video surveillance images show, this thirty-year-old was kidnapped by around twenty armed men. The latter did not take the trouble to be discreet: neighbors heard them forcing the door of the accommodation. Speaking in Arabic, they presented themselves as members of a Lebanese security service, before leaving by sea.
It was only the next day that the official Lebanese press agency released scraps of this affair, which is causing turmoil in the country. In the context of the war, while the Israeli offensive launched on Lebanon on September 23 left more than 1,900 dead, suspicions of an operation led by the Jewish state, which seeks to destroy Hezbollah, were immediate. On Saturday evening, an Israeli military official announced in a statement that an elite navy unit, Flotilla 13, had conducted a “special operation” in Batroun and “apprehended” and “high-ranking Hezbollah agent”, now under interrogation in Israel.
Hezbollah remains silent. On Saturday, he was content to describe this rare kidnapping as“Zionist aggression”. The Lebanese authorities are also very tight-lipped about this kidnapping, which is the subject of an investigation.
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According to three judicial sources cited by the American news agency Associated Press, the investigation seeks to establish whether Imad Amhaz was kidnapped for his links with Hezbollah or because he worked for an Israeli intelligence service – and, in this case, would therefore have been exfiltrated. Around ten SIM cards were found at his home, as well as at least two passports. Most of the video surveillance cameras near the scene of the kidnapping were reportedly deactivated. The operation would have only lasted a few minutes. The investigation will also have to shed light on the signals recorded by military radars to understand which vessel entered Lebanese waters. The presence of these radars was reinforced in the early 2020s to counter the illegal departures of migrants from Lebanon to Cyprus.
Israel's 'freedom of movement' in Lebanon
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