December 31, 2021
An Arabic-language newspaper has published details about Israel’s purported kidnaping of an Iranian general as part of efforts to find information on Israeli airman Ron Arad, who was shot down over Lebanon a third of a century ago.
The London-based Rai al-Youm online newspaper reported October 4 that Mossad agents kidnapped the unnamed Iranian general in Syria to interrogate him, but eventually freed him in Africa.
That same day, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett confirmed that Mossad agents went on a mission the previous month to uncover the whereabouts of Arad, an Israeli Air Force navigator who was captured in 1986 and was last heard from in 1988. The prime minister gave no details.
Media reports have largely characterized the operation as failing to produce any significant new information.
According to the latest report from Independent Arabia, the kidnaped officer, nicknamed “Sabri,” had been sent by Iran to Lebanon in the 1980s and helped train the forces that would eventually form the Hezbollah militia.
He later served in Iran’s Qods Force and in recent years had been advising Syrian regime forces during the civil war there.
The report, which cited “well-informed Iranian sources” and which could not be independently verified, said Israel had believed “Sabri” might have information on Arad, as he was in Lebanon when Arad’s plane was shot down.
According to Independent Arabia, Sabri was recently kidnapped in Damascus, where he was living near the Iranian embassy and went on regular jogs. On one such occasion, as he jogged past a van, Mossad agents inside grabbed him and drove off.
The report claimed the general was then taken to Israel and interrogated “intensively,” before being transferred to Johannesburg, South Africa, and released there with a phone number to contact the Iranian embassy.
Arad bailed out of his plane during an operation in southern Lebanon in 1986. Israel believes he was captured by the Shiite Amal movement which handed him over to Iran. It believes Arad was moved from Lebanon to Iran and then back again.
Several signs of life were received in the first two years of his incarceration, including photos and letters, the last of which was sent on May 5, 1988.
Arad has long been assumed to have died many years ago, although intelligence reports have differed as to the circumstances, timing and location of his death.
In 2016, a report indicated Arad was killed and buried in 1988 near Beirut. But a 2004 Israel Defense Forces commission determined Arad had died in the 1990s after being denied medical treatment.
In 2006, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said the group believed Arad was dead and his burial site unknown, and in 2008, German negotiator Gerhard Konrad told Israel that Hezbollah told him Arad died during a 1988 escape attempt.
Saudi news site al-Arabiya recently reported that as part of the recent operation, Mossad agents extracted DNA from a corpse interred in the eastern Lebanese village of Nabi Chit to test if it was Arad’s remains. The report did not say what the test results revealed.