Mirza, Qortbawi Deny Judiciary Received Hizbullah Spy Ring File

Both Justice Minister Shakib Qortbawi and State Prosecutor Saeed Mirza on Monday denied that the Lebanese Judiciary had received the file of the so-called spy ring that infiltrated Hizbullah from the party.

Meanwhile, State Minister for Administrative Development Mohammed Fneish, a Hizbullah minister in the new cabinet, said his party would hand over the file of the discovered spies to the judicial authorities after it finishes its own probe into the case.

Hizbullah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Friday announced that two members of his party had confessed to being CIA agents and accused arch-foe Israel of turning to the U.S. spy agency when it failed to infiltrate his Iran-backed group.

In the first such acknowledgment of infiltration since the group's founding in the 1980's, Nasrallah refused to disclose the identities of the two party members but said a third case was under investigation, slamming the U.S. embassy in Lebanon as a "den of spies."

"The first confessed he was recruited five months ago ... while the second confessed he had been recruited even before that," Nasrallah said, adding that the recruiters were CIA agents posing as diplomats at the U.S. embassy in Awkar, east of Beirut.

“The U.S. embassy in Awkar is a center for spying and recruiting Israeli agents,” Nasrallah charged.

But his remarks drew a swift response from the U.S. embassy which described the claims as “empty accusations.”