‘Fauda’ creators drop trailer for new action miniseries
Four-part Showtime drama ‘Ghosts of Beirut’ recalls the 20-year hunt for top Hezbollah terrorist Imad Mughniyeh, allegedly killed in a joint CIA-Mossad operation
US television network Showtime released a trailer Wednesday for “Ghosts of Beirut,” a new miniseries written by the Israeli creators of the highly successful “Fauda” series.
The four-part series is based on the real-life hunt for Imad Mughniyeh, the global operations chief of Iranian-backed Lebanese terror group Hezbollah who died in a bomb blast in Damascus on February 12, 2008. Mughniyeh had evaded the CIA and Mossad for over two decades until he was killed in what was reportedly a joint operation by the spy agencies.
“Ghosts of Beirut” will begin streaming on May 19. It was written by Avi Issacharoff and Lior Raz.
“Very proud to present our new series,” Issacharoff tweeted. “Based on the true story of the hunt for Imad Mughniyeh, among the most dangerous terrorists the world has ever known.”
According to Showtime, the four-part series “features an innovative narrative approach augmented by deep journalistic research and documentary elements.”
Mughniyeh is played by Israeli actor Hisham Suliman.
In 2015, the Washington Post reported that the US helped build the bomb and had CIA spotters on the ground in the Syrian capital tailing Mughniyeh, but the explosion that killed him was triggered remotely from Israel.
Mughniyeh was implicated in some of Hezbollah’s major attacks, including the 1992 bombing at the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, and the 1994 bombing of the AMIA building in the Argentinian capital, in which 85 were killed.
The senior Hezbollah terrorist was also involved in the 1983 bombing at the US embassy in Beirut, the killing in 1994 of the CIA’s Lebanon chief William F. Buckley and the 1996 bombing at the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. In the years after the 2003 US invasion if Iraq, Mughniyeh was responsible for the arming and training of Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq who carried out deadly attacks on American troops — all of which put him at the top of the US’s wanted list.
The CIA had to get special approval from then-US president George W. Bush to carry out the operation to kill Mughniyeh with the US attorney general, the director of national intelligence, the national security adviser and the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department all signing off on the plan, according to the report.
Israel has denied any involvement in the killing of Mughniyeh and the US has never admitted any sort of involvement in the operation.
The award-winning “Fauda” focuses on an undercover commando unit of the Israeli army whose members embed themselves in the Palestinian community, gathering intelligence and preventing terror attacks.
In January it topped the Netflix streaming chart in Lebanon, where much of the fourth season was set.