Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces (ISF) arrested five Hezbollah members in the border area between the Batroun and Bcharre highlands in northern Lebanon on Tuesday, according to Lebanese officials and media reports.
The Hezbollah members were reportedly carrying maps and documents, some of which they allegedly attempted to destroy before being taken into custody.
The five men were spotted by an ISF patrol passing through the area, which encountered them by chance, according to the Arabic-language news outlet Al-Modon. The suspects reportedly appeared nervous and began destroying documents, prompting the officers to arrest them and search the surrounding area.
Beirut Time journalist Riad Tawk reported that the documents contained lists of locations across the Koura, Batroun, and Bsharri districts, as well as references to weapons, including sniper rifles.
The five men are currently being questioned by the ISF’s Information Branch.
Following the arrests, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said he had contacted Interior Minister Ahmad Hajjar, Justice Minister Adel Nassar, Prosecutor General Ahmad Rami al-Hajj, and ISF Director General Raed Abdallah.
“The era of impunity is over,” Salam said in a statement from Turkey, while condemning “previously buried cases,” according to L’Orient Today.
“The investigations that have been opened will have no other limits than those imposed by the law,” he said.
Hezbollah may have been planning to carry out sectarian violence
Reacting to the arrests, Lebanese MP Ghassan Yazbeck posted on X/Twitter that the area where the men were detained was not close to Israel and suggested that the Iran-backed group was planning to carry out sectarian violence.
His comments referenced a recent case in which Hezbollah justified the attempted smuggling of 500 kg. of explosives into Beirut with the excuse that it would be used for attacks on the Jewish state.
“How will the party and its press justify this veiled aggression against a peaceful community that has always been careful to maintain good neighborly relations with Shi’ite villages, even during the darkest days of the war?” he wrote.
“While we do not expect an answer from a party mired in arrogance and out of touch with reality, we are certain that it assumes either that the people of Batroun and Bsharri are planning to invade Shi’ite villages – an erroneous assumption – and it is therefore drawing up plans to defend itself, or it is planning to invade neighboring villages. The second possibility is the certain one.
Lebanese gov't's 'laxity' emboldening Hezbollah, MP warns
“In either case, the party will fail. What it may succeed in doing, however, is sowing hatred in areas that have never known this scourge and luring Israel into military action that will bring destruction to communities that have embraced members of its sect and displaced people who fled there in search of safety.
“In fact, the [Lebanese] government’s laxity in the face of the unchecked use of weapons, its refusal to implement its own decisions, and official rhetoric defending and justifying its inaction encourage the party to expand its militia’s military presence further within Lebanon, far from Israel, which it has written off,” Yazbeck wrote.