Freed Lebanese Terrorists Pledge To Fight Israel
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Five militants who were freed as part of a prisoner swap with Israel prayed today at a slain Hezbollah military commander’s grave, pledging to follow in his footsteps and continue fighting Israel.
Wearing military fatigues, the five men walked down a red carpet laid out for them outside Imad Mughniyeh’s burial spot at a cemetery south of Beirut.
They laid wreaths and gave a military salute as supporters showered them with rice.
Mughniyeh, a shadowy figure Israel and the West accuse of masterminding terrorist bombings in the 1980s and 1990s, was killed in a car bomb in neighboring Syria in February.
Hezbollah and its supporters regard him as a hero of almost mythical stature. The militant group dubbed yesterday’s prisoner exchange “Operation Radwan” in reference to Mughniyeh’s nom de guerre, Hajj Radwan.
“We swear by God … to continue on your same path and not to retreat until we achieve the same stature that God bestowed on you,” Samir Kantar, who had been the longest-held Lebanese prisoner in Israel, said. He had been convicted of killing an Israeli father in front of his 4-year-old daughter, and then killing her by crushing her skull with a rifle butt.
Kantar referred to Mughniyeh’s “martyrdom,” saying, “This is our great wish. We envy you and we will achieve it, God willing.”
A member of the Druse minority sect, Kantar and four Shiite Muslim guerrillas were freed in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah at the onset of the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.
The exchange was mediated over the past 18 months by a U.N.-appointed German official.
Israel also returned to Lebanon the bodies of nearly 200 Lebanese and Palestinian Arab fighters who were killed fighting Israel over the past three decades.
Four tractor-trailers loaded with coffins carrying their remains were driven today from south Lebanon to Beirut. The convoy was stopped often along the way by throngs of supporters.
Villagers showered the coffins with rice and rose petals. The coffins were wrapped in Lebanese and Hezbollah flags and covered with wreaths. A banner on one of the trucks read, “The Martyrs of Victory.”
