Hizbullah
HizbullahIsrael news photo: Flash 90

A senior Hizbullah MP accused Israel on Tuesday of bugging the mobile phones of members of the terror group, allowing them to send false text messages and by this to track the phones' movements.

AFP quoted Hizbullah MP Hassan Fadlallah during at a press conference with Telecommunications Minister Charbel Nahhas as saying: “The enemy (Israel) has succeeded in planting secret lines ... in the mobile phones of some members of the resistance.  After a lengthy, complex investigation ... it was revealed that three resistance members were using local mobile phones which had been deliberately sold to them after being implanted with secret Israeli lines.”

Fadlallah , who chairs the Lebanese parliament's media and telecommunications committee claimed that the phones had been sold to Hizbullah operatives by a Lebanese spying for Israel. He said that Hizbullah cracked the case in coordination with military intelligence after police zeroed in three Hizbullah members believed to be Israeli agents, but who instead turned out to be victims of the Israeli bugging.

A ministry expert who also took part in the news conference confirmed that the infiltration meant that Israel could send out text messages and other information from the phones, and could also track their movements and listen in on any conversations they want.

Hizbullah’s accusations against Israel are nothing new: more than 100 people in Lebanon have been arrested on suspicion of spying for Israel since April 2009. Last July, a Lebanese man suspected of spying for Israel was sentenced to death after being convicted of transferring classified information to Israel that was used during the 2006 Second Lebanon War against Hizbullah.

Last month, more than 30 Lebanese citizens were convicted in Beirut on charges of collaborating with Israel. All were sentenced in absentia and received 15-year prison terms. All of the defendants had fled the country for Israel in 2000 when then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak withdrew IDF troops from southern Lebanon.