From the Liveblog of
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
Lebanon says Mossad behind mysterious killing of Hezbollah money mover
Lebanon’s interior minister alleges that the mysterious abduction and killing of a Hezbollah-linked Lebanese currency exchanger in a villa on the edge of a quiet mountain resort town earlier this month was likely the work of Israeli operatives.
The killing of Mohammad Srour, 57, who was sanctioned by the US and accused of funneling money from Iran to Hamas, was like something out of an international spy thriller. Pistols equipped with silencers and gloves were found in a bucket of water and chemicals at the scene, apparently intended to remove fingerprints and other evidence, Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi tells The Associated Press.
Thousand of dollars in cash were left scattered around the body of Srour, also known as Sarur, as if to dispel any speculation that robbery was the motive.
“Lebanese security agencies have suspicion or accusations that Mossad was behind this operation,” Mawlawi says. “The way the crime was carried out led to this suspicion.”
He provides no specific evidence for his allegations. Mawlawi says the investigation is still ongoing and once it’s over the results will be made public and referred to judicial authorities.
The Israeli prime minister’s office, which oversees the Mossad, does not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Three Lebanese judicial officials familiar with the investigation tell the AP that a man posing as a customer had contacted Srour from abroad and asked him to deliver a cash transfer to a woman in the mountain resort of Beit Meri.
The officials say Srour first went with his nephew and left after handing the woman the money. He was contacted by the same person with another request a day after his first visit, the officials say. This time he went alone, after which his family lost contact with him.
Mawlawi says the phone the woman used to contact Srour was only activated to contact him.
He says the perpetrators had first tried to rent an apartment in Beirut’s southeastern suburb of Hazmieh, a detail that has not been previously reported, but later canceled, apparently because “they did not find (the apartment) suitable to carry out the operation.”
Mawlawi says the killers then shifted to the quiet town of Beit Meri, where they rented a three-story villa on the edge of the town using fake Lebanese identity cards. The country’s General Security Directorate is looking into the identities of people who entered and left the country around the period of the killing, he says.
Srour went missing on April 3 in Beit Meri, and his body was found a week later in the villa. Mawlawi says investigators found “a large number of bullet” wounds in different parts of his body, including his arms and legs. He was reportedly handcuffed.
The villa is near a police checkpoint and a few hundred meters from a military post.
A Hezbollah spokesperson declines to comment on the killing, citing the ongoing investigation. The spokesperson refuses to say whether Srour was a Hezbollah member but says he worked in the past for the al-Qard al-Hasan Association, the financial arm of the Iran-backed group.
The Times of Israel Community.