US puts Lebanese Samir Kuntar on terror blacklist

The United States places Samir Kuntar, a Lebanese terrorist notorious for the murder of three Israelis including a four-year-old young girl, on its terror blacklist.

Israel released Kuntar as part of a prisoner exchange in 2008, three decades after the killings, and he has since become a high-profile figure in the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah.

“He has also played an operational role, with the assistance of Iran and Syria, in building up Hezbollah’s terrorist infrastructure in the Golan Heights,” the State Department says.

As a designated “global terrorist,” Kantar is subject to the seizure of any assets he holds in areas of US jurisdiction and Americans are forbidden from doing business with him.

Kuntar was 17 in April 1979 when he and three other then members of the Palestine Liberation Front infiltrated the Israeli village of Nahariya by sea from Lebanon.

The gang raided the home of the Haran family — the couple Danny and Smadar and their two toddlers.

Smadar hid on the top floor of the house with the couple’s younger daughter, Yael, aged two. Desperate that the toddler’s cries would give them up, Smadar accidentally smothered Yael with her own hands.

Kuntar and his accomplices took Danny, 28, and four-year-old Einat hostage and fled to the beach, where he shot the father in front of the daughter and then crushed her skull with his rifle.

— AFP