News - Middle East: Lebanon has arrested 32 people suspected of spying for Israel, accusing them of providing intelligence that enabled deadly strikes on officials and facilities of the Hezbollah resistance movement, officials say.

Six of the arrests occurred before a November ceasefire between Hezbollah and Tel Aviv, while “nine people have been tried by the military court” and 23 remain under investigation, a judicial official was quoted as saying Thursday. 

Lebanon has no formal ties with Israel, and any contact is punishable by imprisonment.

Two of those convicted were sentenced to seven and eight years of hard labor for supplying Israel with the locations and names of Hezbollah officials, which facilitated Israeli strikes.

They were found guilty of “providing the enemy with coordinates, addresses and names of Hezbollah officials, knowing that the enemy would use this information to bomb locations where the group’s officials and leaders were located,” the official said.

Some suspects admitted to giving Israel information during the regime's attacks on southern Lebanon and Beirut’s southern suburbs, including details on vehicles, buildings, and newly appointed Hezbollah leaders, which reportedly led to targeted killings.

Some agents were tasked with monitoring certain Hezbollah military and security figures or photographing buildings and facilities that Israel suspected were weapons depots and command and control centers, a Lebanese security source said.

Last September, an act of Israeli cyber terrorism caused hundreds of Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies to explode. Lebanon reported that the attack killed 39 people and injured thousands.

Lebanon has historically arrested many Israeli collaborators, particularly after the country’s economic collapse in 2019, with sentences reaching up to 25 years.

Source: Press TV