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Israel captures and interrogates lebanon grocer Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/15344352.htmhttp://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/world/15344352.htm
Posted on Thu, Aug. 24, 2006
Confusion for Israelis, ordeal for grocer
The namesake of Hezbollah’s leader was questioned for weeks about his political ties.
By LEILA FADEL
McClatchy Newspapers
BAALBEK, Lebanon | Hassan Dib Nasrallah, a Lebanese grocer, is a slight man with short gray whiskers.
He is 54, bald, and looks nothing like Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who at 46 is full-faced with a dark beard.
That is why Nasrallah the grocer was surprised by the first question from his interrogators after a daring Israeli commando raid snatched him from his neighborhood Aug. 1 and spirited him and four others aboard helicopters back to Israel for questioning.
“They said, ‘Are you Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah?’ ” the grocer recalled, using an honorific that designates Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah as a descendant of Muhammad. “I said no.”
On Wednesday, Nasrallah was back in his hometown 60 miles north of the Israeli border after a three-week absence that may be the oddest saga yet to come from Israel’s 34-day campaign against Hezbollah. Israeli officials turned Nasrallah, his son and three other men over to U.N. peacekeepers Monday after an Israeli civil rights lawyer filed a petition to Israel’s High Court of Justice demanding their release.
When Nasrallah was taken, Israelis would say only that they had been seeking top-level Hezbollah officials when they sent a 100-member commando force to Baalbek, a city not far from the Syrian border.
They pulled Nasrallah and the other men from a basement where they had taken shelter from Israeli air strikes, marched them for nearly two hours to waiting helicopters and flew them to Israel.
For the next 14 hours, Nasrallah recalled, interrogators repeatedly asked him whether he was the head of Hezbollah. Then they asked him whether he was a member of the militant Islamist group.
“They thought all Shiites were Hezbollah, and I said no, they are not,” Nasrallah said. “I’m an independent; I’m with no one.”
So the interrogators changed their line of questioning.
“Are you related to Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah?” they asked.
“Only our names are the same,” he answered.
Hassan Nasrallah is a common name in Lebanon, and in Hassan Dib Nasrallah’s family alone there are many. He was named for his grandfather; his oldest grandson is Hassan Nasrallah; his brother’s son is Hassan Nasrallah; and his uncle is Hassan Nasrallah.
“They knew I wasn’t him,” he said, describing how interrogators popped in to look at him and double-check his identity.
Eventually, all five were transferred to a prison, where they shared a cell for 20 days until their release. They were questioned sporadically and their arms and legs were shackled during interrogation, but otherwise they were not mistreated, said another of the men, Ahmed al-Awta.
Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, acknowledged Wednesday that an error was made.
“There was a situation where people we picked up assuming they were Hezbollah fighters turned out not to be,” he said. “When it became clear in the interview that they were not Hezbollah, they were released as quickly as possible. This particular grocer was one such person.”
He laughed at the idea that the common names had anything to do with it.
“There was no case of mistaken identity,” he said. “We know very well who the real Hassan Nasrallah is.”
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Dion Nissenbaum of McClatchy Newspapers contributed to this report.
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