Alleged Hezbollah Mossad spy ‘was Nasrallah bodyguard’

An alleged Mossad agent who infiltrated Hezbollah was in the past responsible for the personal security of the head of the terror group, a Kuwaiti news report said on Wednesday.

Since Hezbollah exposed the collaborator, it has also dismissed several other officials from its ranks, the report said.

A report in a Lebanese news agency on Tuesday said Hezbollah recently exposed a senior spy working for the Israeli Mossad intelligence agency within its foreign operations branch.

According to Kuwaiti daily al-Rai, the double agent, a southern Lebanon businessman known only by the acronym M. Sh., guarded Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah in the past.

Nasrallah is though to be a top target for Israel and rarely makes public appearances for fear of assassination.

The Kuwaiti report also backed up claims of an earlier Lebanese report which said the alleged mega-spy was involved in the Lebanese terror group’s foreign operations unit, and played a role in the 2008 assassination of senior Hezbollah member Imad Mughniyeh.

Unnamed sources told the El-Nashra news outlet Tuesday that the “collaborator,” exposed a few weeks ago, was an official in unit 910, responsible for “external operations against specific Israeli targets.”

The spy worked as a traveling businessman and was recruited by the Mossad in a “western Asian country,” El-Nashra reported.

Lebanon’s security agencies periodically report the exposure of Israeli-recruited agents in the country, as well as of listening devices planted in the south of the country.

According to the original report, the collaborator had been working for Israel for years and succeeded in thwarting a number of Hezbollah operations planned to avenge the assassination of Mughniyeh in February 2008, ostensibly by Israel.

He also reportedly exposed other Hezbollah agents, including Mohammed Amadar, arrested in Peru in late October with TNT and detonators following a Mossad tip-off; Hossam Yaacoub, convicted in Cyprus for planning attacks against Israeli tourists in March 2013; and Daoud Farhat and Youssef Ayad, arrested in April 2014 in Bangkok for planning terror attacks against Israeli tourists in Thailand.

Riot police lead Hossam Taleb Yaacoub, a 24-year-old Swedish-Lebanese citizen, center top, to the court in the southern port city of Limassol Cyprus, Thursday, March 7, 2013 photo credit: AP/Pavlos Vrionides

El-Nashra reported that the collaborator is also suspected of taking part in Mughniyeh’s assassination in Damascus, using an explosive device placed in his car seat, as well as the assassination of Hezbollah official Hassan al-Laqis in December 2013.

Mughniyeh’s assassination was considered a major blow to the terror group. Israel has never claimed responsibility, but Hezbollah has blamed Jerusalem for the attack and vowed to take revenge.