“Lebanon Debate”

The trial session of “Ansar agent” Ahmed Mukhadar before the military court showed the extent of the latter’s ability to distort the facts proven at all stages of the investigation regarding his dealings with the Israeli Mossad, and to provide him with coordinates that were the target of the aggression in his town of Ansar and other areas in the south, which led to casualties.

The president of the reserve court, Brigadier General Tony Shadid, confronted the accused with his confessions, and he insisted on his denial, especially regarding his transfer to Israel in a plane that could accommodate only twenty people, where he underwent training and a lie detector machine for three days in order to “pass” the exam.

Brigadier General Shadeed peppered the accused with a barrage of questions over a period of two hours, and refuted his previous confessions included in his 86-page file about the “worker journey” that he began in Italy via Germany since the year 2020, and which continued until his return to Lebanon in the year 2024, before his matter was discovered and arrested in January of this year, and the price he received for it was 10 thousand euros.

Brigadier General Shedid had taken over the drug trial after the president of the court, Brigadier General Wassim Fayyad, stepped down, because the accused came from the same town, Ansar, with the condition that he would continue examining the file and set a new date for the trial at a later time after the end of the judicial recess.

The accused denied all of his initial confessions, and claimed that the investigators forced him to sign blank papers, and that the places he mentioned that were later targeted by Israel did not come in the context of the investigation. Despite this, the accused did not insist on his right to have a lawyer present during his interrogation before the investigating judge, claiming that his concern was to contact his family after a soldier told him that his father had died.

The president of the court noted that the accused changed his statement three times, initially admitting that the Israeli Mossad officer called Michael Lema asked him about Hezbollah and its military presence in the south, and that through these questions the accused confirmed that he was from the Mossad, and asked him to provide him with information about the party’s members, their phone numbers, and the owners of the bulldozers and heavy machinery and their types, and that the accused actually collected information about that and received in return 800 and 500 euros in two payments.

The accused denied this incident, saying that what was true was the financial amounts only, “but I did not receive them in this context,” but rather in exchange for a study he prepared to create an “online” page concerned with shipping bulldozers to Lebanon and comparing their prices in Italy and Vietnam.

The first meeting between the accused and his employer was in Milan, and he said it was an “acquaintance meeting,” where he was asked about the social situation in Lebanon and how to ship, and it was agreed that the sale would be limited to the accused and no one else.

That was in the year 2021, when the accused returned to Lebanon after this meeting, which was attended, in addition to Lima, by the latter’s secretary called Lina, his assistant, and another person named Chris. The accused denied that the latter had handed him a “power bank” with a pen, saying: “I did not take anything from him except 800 euros in that meeting.”

Three months after that, a second meeting took place in a restaurant in Germany in an isolated room, and the accused offered him work in the field of energy and batteries. As for why he moved from the field of bulldozers, he said: “I knew what the market required at that time.” The accused asked about the fate of the studies he sent him regarding the work, and Lima’s answer was that he sent them to the officials.

The next day, Lima sent the accused on his phone the location of a hotel, so he went to it, then asked him to take a taxi that was waiting for him after providing him with its license plate number. He inquired about the reason for changing cars during his meeting with him, so Lima informed him that he had to leave the hotel and sent him a car to take him to the second meeting.

The accused returned and met him in the same hotel in the same way, and subjected him to a lie detector machine “for the sake of credibility at work,” where the accused reported that Lima asked him general questions and whether he told anyone about the “topics,” and he was monitoring the device’s indicator. This lasted about an hour and a half before Lima told him that he had successfully passed the lie detector test. Here the accused objected to the word “success,” “correcting” the president of the court that Lima told him: “I am finished.”

What the accused reported in the preliminary investigation during the test he underwent, about Lima asking him about people in the town of Ansar, Hezbollah members, and one of the party’s officials who was later assassinated, he denied it completely and in detail, claiming that Lima only asked him general questions, and said: “There is a problem in the investigation that happened to me.”

When the representative of the Public Prosecution, Judge Nidal Al-Shaer, asked him when he learned that Lima was from the Mossad, the accused replied: “It was a Thursday afternoon in late October of the year 2021.” When he learned of this, he cut off communication, then said that communication occurred intermittently. Al-Shaer noted that the accused initially stated that he had undergone a lie detector machine in Milan, while he stated before the court that this matter had occurred in Germany.

At the end of 2022, the accused initially admitted that he had entered Israel with Lima, who informed him after meeting him in Milan: “I will take you on a nice trip for 3 days,” and the accused found himself inside a plane that could accommodate only twenty people. He asked Lima about the destination, and he said to him: “I will take you to Israel.”

The accused denied this incident before the court, and claimed that he was threatened by the investigation officer, who told him at the time: “Write what you want.” But he acknowledged this incident before the investigating judge, justifying it by saying: “Before I arrived before the investigating judge, I was beaten and threatened,” and that what was important to him was contacting his family after he was informed that his father had died.

The president of the court commented on the accused’s words, asking him if what concerned him was only his father and not his country, to which he replied that what he said happened to him in the course of the investigation. Brigadier General Shadid repeated the accused’s question: “Did you go to Israel or not and undergo the lie detector machine there again?” The accused’s answer was that these details did not occur, and “I did not leave on a plane.”

The total amount that the accused received from Lima was 10 thousand euros, and when he was asked in exchange for what, he stated that it was in exchange for a Business Plan, so the accused’s agent intervened, explaining that the projects that his client sent to Lima were documented by e-mail.

The accused also denied that he received a bag at the airport during his return to Lebanon, and a USB memory stick that he used to film video clips and pictures of places that were targeted, and he said: “I did not bring anything with me and I did not film anything.”

At the same pace, the interrogation of the accused continued, and he denied everything he said during his initial investigations regarding the coordinates he provided to his employer, confirming that the last contact with Lima was in the first month of the year 2024.

When the president of the court asked him in amazement how the Mossad officer gave him 10,000 euros and did not ask him a useful question, the accused replied that he did not know if Lima was an officer.

As for his confession that Lima asked him, in early 2024, to collect information about how to bring money into Hezbollah and the sources of funding, and that he actually informed him that the party obtains money from institutions affiliated with it, such as supermarkets, hospitals, laboratories, and Qard Al Hassan, and from money changers and businessmen who support the party, the accused replied to that: “I mentioned that, but not in this context, and I do not know how it is written.”

When asked again about his filming of sites that were targeted, the accused said: “I did not film, and these sites were mentioned in the investigation in another context.” Regarding information provided to his employer related to one of the party officials who was assassinated, the accused replied that he was asked about this person and he denied it before the investigating judge, and that he did not know him and heard about him after his death.

Regarding his filming, in November 2025, of the site of the Israeli aggression in Ansar, which targeted vehicles, bulldozers, and exhibitions belonging to a member of the party at the request of Lima, the accused said that no communication occurred during that period between him and Lima, and the last amount he received from him was in January of the year 2024.

Regarding his confession that in mid-August of the year 2025, Lima called him after hearing the sounds of warplanes on the Tayr Dibba road, and that he asked him to go to the site of the bombing, so he filmed remotely and sent the pictures to Lima, the accused denied this incident, and said that he was at Saraya Bint Jbeil at that time, and contact had been cut off between him and Lima.