Lebanese recover from Kafkaesque trip to Israel

Look like the famed Israeli intelligence community is as hopelessly incompetant as the US one :-))

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Lebanese recover from Kafkaesque trip to Israel

By Jonathan Wright
Reuters
Friday, August 25, 2006; 12:49 PM

BAALBEK, Lebanon (Reuters) - Wellwishers gathered in Hassan Nasrallah's garden above the ancient Lebanese town of Baalbek on Friday, delighted to see him and four relatives back from a Kafkaesque three-week adventure in Israeli detention.

Nasrallah, a modest shopkeeper who happens to have the same name as the leader of the Lebanese guerrilla movement Hizbollah, shook hands with his visitors and seated them under the trees as the family prepared a feast of grilled lamb.

Some of them had not seen Nasrallah and the other four men since Israeli commandos descended on his house on August 1, marched them up into the hills, put them on a helicopter and flew them to a secret location in Israel.

The Israelis dumped them on the Lebanese border at Naqoura on Monday after 20 days, without an apology or even an explanation of what was behind their bizarre experience.

Bilal Nasrallah, Hassan's 31-year-old son and partner in the grocery business, told Reuters on Friday that in the 18 hours of interrogation the Israelis never offered any reason for the raid and refused to answer any questions from the Lebanese.

"But the basis of their interrogation was that we had some connection with Hizbollah. In fact, we have nothing at all to do with it," he said. Neighbors and a Hizbollah official also denied that any of the men were members of the organization.

Israel and Hizbollah fought a five-week war until a truce came into effect on August 14. Nearly 1,200 Lebanese, mainly civilians, were killed in the bombing and fighting, along with 157 Israelis, mainly soldiers inside Lebanon.

ADDRESS ON THE INTERNET?

"My theory is that the Israelis were trying to use us to deceive public opinion, to give the impression they had achieved some great success," Bilal Nasrallah said.

Al-Hajj Ahmed Raya, the Hizbollah spokesman in the Baalbek region, in the Bekaa valley northeast of the capital Beirut, said the Israelis had probably found Hassan Nasrallah's name and address on the Internet.

"It's another sign of Israeli impotence, that they should resort to kidnapping someone and his relatives, a builder, a tiler, a plasterer and a supermarket owner, and pretend that they had captured a Hizbollah leader," he added.

The five men were Hassan Nasrallah, 55, and his son Bilal, Mohammed Jaafar Ali Diab, a family friend, Hassan al-Burji and Ahmed Outa, who are relatives of the Nasrallahs by marriage.

The Israelis also took Hassan Nasrallah's 13-year-old son, Mohammed, but when the helicopters arrived they had second thoughts about him and set him free in the mountains in the middle of the night, Bilal said.

Bilal Nasrallah and Diab complained that the Israelis had roughed them up, knocking out some of Diab's teeth, and during the 20 days of detention never allowed them any contact with lawyers, the Red Cross, a judge or anyone else other than the interrogators and jailers.

Before releasing them on August 21, the Israeli military called in still photographers and video cameramen to take pictures of them, again without any explanation, Bilal said.

The Israelis drove them in a bus to the border, where U.N. peacekeepers and representatives of the International Red Cross were waiting. "They left us without any apology," he added.