By: Elias Bejjani*
It is a righteous, legitimate and constitutional obligation for every nation to safeguard its national security, protect its people, enforce order and law and see that citizens who breach laws or regulations and threaten the public safety and stability are held accountable and dealt with officially by security and judiciary bodies. In this respect the act of espionage for a foreign country is a very serious crime and most countries deal harshly with those who commit it.
The transparent legal process that the US applied and abided by in regards to the recently discovered Russian spying cell is a typical role model of how democratic and free countries handle espionage issues under the umbrella of law and justice. Unfortunately this is not the situation in Lebanon where Hezbollah, the armed Iranian terrorist organization, is hijacking the country, holding her people hostage, fully controlling the government and manipulating all her institutions.
Last week, according to the daily Al-Liwaa Beirut newspaper, Hezbollah arrested Mr. Charbel Qazzi, a Lebanese telecommunications executive, at Alfa mobile phone network, and accused him of spying for Israel. Hezbollah interrogated Mr. Qazzi, prepared the espionage case against him and then handed him over to the Lebanese Army Intelligence services.
What is sad, frightening, ironic and deplorable is that the Lebanese officials at all levels, the president, the prime minister, the government members, the security bodies (institutions), politicians and clergy, all disregarded the fact that Hezbollah and not the Lebanese security personnel had arrested Mr. Qazzi. They all turned their heads away from the core and essence of this terrible judicial scandal, and ignored the confiscation and marginalization of their roles by Hezbollah. They all with no exception sank in trivial and superficial childish details and openly adopted Hezbollah's rhetoric of hostility, war, revenge, hanging and beheading.
It is not the first time during the last five years that Hezbollah in violation of all laws confiscated the state's judicial and security institutions' roles in arresting, kidnapping or liquidating citizens after arbitrarily and unlawfully accusing them of treason and espionage while the state's officials were subservient, scared and mute.
In Hezbollah's evil context, on February 12/09, in full view of a Lebanese Armed Forces manning checkpoint at the Beirut International airport, three masked armed men kidnapped the information technology operations manager for Middle East Airlines, Mr. Joseph Sadder, as he walked to work, and took him to Hezbollah's mini-state in the southern suburbs. Since then, no one knows about his whereabouts or what happened to him. Sadly, many Lebanese citizens face such a doomed fate on a daily basis.
The scary and barbaric facet in Hezbollah's newly engineered fiasco is that all the Lebanese officials have adopted Hezbollah's Dracula-like bloodthirsty rhetoric and like parrots are echoing their demand to quickly hang Mr. Qazzi and all others who have been accused of spying for Israel. They surpassed the judiciary and did not even wait to see if the accused was actually guilty or not.
Even President Michel Suleiman fell into Hezbollah's rhetorical trap, who told reporters: "Punishment should be severe. The issue of spying on the nation is unacceptable from anyone and there must be severity in punishing the spies. The judiciary will not show leniency and if I get a verdict of the death sentence, I will sign it".
Hezbollah's leadership’s ongoing boldness, arrogance, bragging, infringement on the state's authorities and constitution, despise for human rights, criminal conduct, and contempt for law and order, are all on the rise. A few hours after its illegal and scandalous arrest of Mr. Charbel Qazzi, Hezbollah's Member of Parliament, Mohamed Raad, publicly challenged the government and the people of Lebanon and made it so clear that his armed group would arrest whoever is a threat to their security and "resistance".
Raad said: "The disclosure of this telecommunication agent makes us think with utmost seriousness and caution to pursue all those who we sense as suspicious in culture, security, communications, information, education and economy." "The focus of the Israeli enemy to infiltrate our domestic front aims to buy it time, since it currently lacks military readiness to launch a war, which would be very expensive and put its very [existence] at risk”.
It is worth mentioning that Hezbollah owns and runs an illegal private and secretive telecommunication network that the Lebanese state has no control over . At the same time, this terrorist group dominates by force and bullying all Lebanon's private and governmental communication networks and thus openly monitors and spies on all the Lebanese, including officials, clergy, and politicians as well as foreign embassies.
The question here is who is spying on whom and who is the real culprit of spying, and where is the state? Meanwhile, Mr. Qazzi's innocence or guilt must be decided on by the judiciary and dealt with in accordance with the country's laws. But what is really pivotal, important, crucial and unanswered is who gave Hezbollah, this armed terrorist group, the authority and the legitimacy to spy openly on the Lebanese people and on their officials, and in accordance with which covenant or law could it arrest Lebanese citizens and accuse them of treason and spying?
This bizarre debauchery of an accusation and arrest and incident of arrogance and mockery show beyond any doubt that Lebanon is occupied by Hezbollah and that all the state's officials are either intimidated by, or directly related to this group's leadership.
Why has Hezbollah's leadership been lately so nervous, restless, angry, hostile and creating havoc in south Lebanon with the UNIFIL, targeting the USA and accusing its administration of defamation, questioning boldly with suspicion a security agreement signed few years ago between Lebanon and the USA and now arresting a telecommunication technician and accusing him of treason and spying for Israel?
The answer lies in the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) verdict that will be issued within few weeks. All unofficial reports and analyses say that Hezbollah had assassinated Lebanon's late Prime Minister Raffic Hariri, and accordingly, the expected verdict will charge numerous top notch Hezbollah personnel.
According to the same reports and analyses, the most solid proof that the STL has against Hezbollah is the telecommunication database. By the arrest of Mr. Qazzi and the kind of accusations made against him, Hezbollah is trying to discredit this solid evidence against its leaders.
It is interesting to know that Mr. Qazzi is the latest of some 70 Lebanese including security personnel arrested on questionable spying charges for Israel since April last year. Hezbollah directly or indirectly was behind most of these very suspicious arrests.
In conclusion, Hezbollah, the Iranian proxy army, is occupying Lebanon, while neither the Lebanese people nor their government leaders are anymore capable of standing up to Hezbollah’s cruelty, hegemony and terror. The Free World has an obligation to come to the rescue of this occupied country that Hezbollah and its two masters, Syria and Iran, are mercilessly devouring round-the-clock.
N.B: To read the Arabic version of the above editorial CLICK Here
http://www.10452lccc.com/elias.arabic09/elias.spies3.07.10.htm
*Elias Bejjani
*Canadian-Lebanese Human Rights activist, journalist and political commentator
*Email phoenicia@hotmail.com
*Web sites http://www.10452lccc.com & http://www.clhrf.com
*Mailing phoenicia group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Phoenicia/
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