Lebanon charges PKK Kurds with spying for Israel

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By IAN ALLEN| intelNews.org |
Lebanese authorities have detained three alleged members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on charges of spying for Israel. The three arrestees, whose names have not been released to the media, were reportedly arrested last week by Lebanese military intelligence forces in Jounieh, a town located on the Mediterranean coast, about 15 kilometers north of Beirut. The arrests form part of a wider Lebanese counterintelligence offensive that has netted over 100 alleged Israeli agents in Lebanon since April of 2009. But news of the detentions have inflamed an ongoing discussion in Turkey about alleged covert links between Israeli intelligence agencies and Kurdish separatists operating in Turkey, Iraq and Syria. In the months since Israel’s controversial attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which resulted in the deaths of one American and eight Turkish citizens, several Turkish politicians have accused Tel Aviv of aiding Kurdish separatist groups in Turkey’s Anatolia province and in neighboring Iraq. Commenting on a PKK attack on a Turkish naval installation in İskenderun (Alexandretta), which took place on the same day as the Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, Husein Celik, Deputy Chairman of Turkey’s governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), said he did not “think it is a coincidence that these two attacks took place at the same time”. Neither Turkey nor Israel have commented on the news of the arrests in Lebanon.