Israeli Spy Confesses to Providing Israel with Mughniyeh’s Car Plate Number
Syrian state television broadcast on Saturday the confessions of an alleged Israeli spy who conspired to assassinate top Hizbullah commander Imad Mughniyeh.
He confessed that Mughniyeh was murdered a day after he gave Israel his car plate number.
The top Hizbullah official was assassinated in Damascus on February 13, 2008.
The alleged Israeli spy Iyad Youssef Naim told the Syrian TV that he headed to Damascus twice, on Israeli orders, to locate any assembly of a political or international organization, but he wasn’t able to reach any valuable information.
However, the Israeli side that he was in contact with urged him to pursue the issue and head to Damascus again, providing him with a street address. “But I didn’t find any political gathering,” Naim told the state television.
“They meant (by political gathering) any center for Hamas, Hizbullah, or any other non-Syrian assembly,” the spy explained.
He confessed that he “saw a man holding a newspaper on the street and two other people in a Korean car… but they contacted me again to check if there was any (Mitsubishi) Pajero car on the site.”
Naim was born in 1976 and is a Palestinian – Jordanian national.
“I saw the car entering the street along with a Mercedes, so I gave them the Pajero plate number… and headed back to Latakia,” the spy said.
He confirmed that his espionage mission took place on February 12, 2008, and he knew the next day that Mughniyeh was assassinated in the same car he had seen a day earlier.
Asked about the nature of the information that Israel wanted to obtain, he noted that it was related “to Latakia city and its demographic issues like the residents’ sects and if there were any churches in the area, as well as issues related to Tartus and Latakia ports, ships numbers and most importantly the containers and the capacity of the port,” Naim added.
He pointed out that he was forbidden from drinking alcohol, contacting women, and conducting any long conversations.
He as was also ordered to avoid contact with anyone working in a security institution.
Mughniyeh, linked to the kidnappings of western hostages in the 1980s, was killed in a car bomb in Damascus in February 2008.
Hizbullah had repeatedly accused Israel of being behind his murder.
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