Summary: The arrest took place last week at Rafic Hariri International Airport in Beirut as the detainee was preparing to travel to Iraq. He was referred to the military court to stand trial.

Lebanese authorities arrested a person close to Hezbollah on charges of spying for Israel and providing it with information that led to the assassination of leaders from the group, a senior judicial source told AFP on Tuesday.

The source, who is close to the investigations and spoke on condition of anonymity, said that "a high-level Israeli agent was arrested in Beirut, involved in providing the Israeli side with precise information that led to the assassination of Hezbollah officials, including four top security commanders," explaining that the detainee "was very close to the party's leaders and possessed extensive information due to his close ties with them."

According to the source, the arrest took place last week at Rafic Hariri International Airport in Beirut while the detainee was preparing to travel to Iraq, and he was referred to the military court to stand trial.

The detainee, originally from southern Lebanon and married to an Iraqi woman, traveled between Lebanon and Iraq, from where he would go to Turkey "to meet officers and personnel linked to the Israeli Mossad, to provide them with information about targets he was gathering data on in Beirut, which were later struck," according to the same source.

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The source did not identify the Hezbollah leaders targeted by Israel based on the detainee's information or the date of their killing, but since Hezbollah opened a front against Israel in October 2023 in support of the Palestinian Hamas movement, and then on March 2, 2026, in response to the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Israeli-American strikes, Israel has carried out a series of precise strikes against the Tehran-backed group, resulting in the killing of its top leaders and field commanders, and destroying a large part of its military arsenal. Among the most prominent was the group's former Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in Israeli strikes on September 27, 2024. Last October, a judicial source reported that authorities arrested 30 people on suspicion of providing Israel during the war with precise information about party positions and the movements of its members.

It is worth noting that Lebanon and Israel are officially in a state of war, and Lebanese law punishes espionage crimes with imprisonment. Judicial rulings have been issued against a number of detainees, some of whom received 25-year sentences. Over the past years, Lebanese security services have arrested dozens of people suspected of dealing with Israel, many of whom were recruited online following the economic collapse that the country has been experiencing since the fall of 2019.