BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- A retired Lebanese army official detained on suspicion of spying for Israel met with Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah at least once, Israeli media reported Monday.
According to the Israeli news site Enyan Merkazi, Brigadier General Fayez Karam, who is also a senior official with Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement, met Nasrallah in his hideout in 2006, where he has been staying since. Aoun was reportedly present at the meeting.
The report said Nasrallah was the first to receive information on Karam's arrest last Tuesday and informed Aoun that the move was not linked to political gains.
According to an anonymous source mentioned in the report, the meeting with Nasrallah means two things: first, Israel's Mossad had access to Nasrallah at least once and Karam conveyed all the details concerning the measures to meet with the Shiite movement's leader.
In early August, Lebanese media reported that Karam was detained by security forces on suspicion of spying for Israel, as the government launches a crackdown on collaborators. Hezbollah is reportedly keen to follow-up with investigations into the allegations.
An anonymous security source told Lebanese daily As-Safir in an interview published Thursday that Karam confessed that he started communicating with Israel in the early 1980s.
Karam, 62, graduated from the Lebanese Military School in 1972 as a lieutenant. He held several leadership positions in the army including head of the counter-terror and spying bureau, NOW Lebanon reported. The retired official left the military after Aoun was forced into exile in France in 1991 and returned with the leader when Syria withdrew from Lebanon in 2005.
Lebanese forces have arrested at least 50 suspects since July, reportedly for involvement in collaborating with Israel, in an expanding probe into an alleged network of Israeli spies in Lebanon's telecommunication's sector.
