Hezbollah (40 page)

Another indication of Dbouk’s seniority within Hezbollah is not only that he worked directly for Hezbollah’s chief procurement officer Haj Hassan Hilu Laqis but that CSIS intercepts indicate the two were close. Moreover, Laqis clearly assessed that Dbouk played a key role for Hezbollah as a procurement agent in Canada, while others considered him important enough to be needed back in Lebanon.
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Others recognized Dbouk’s seniority as well. At one point during an FBI interview, Said Harb asked the agent to stop taking notes and said, “I know why you’ve done this to me and my family; you want Dbouk—you want Hezbollah.” Harb went on to identify Dbouk, who by this time had left Canada and returned to Lebanon, as well as Dbouk’s wife, as salaried employees of Hezbollah’s al-Manar television station.
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Back in Canada, members of the Hezbollah procurement group, now being run by Dbouk’s brother-in-law Ali Amhaz, were also concerned their ties to Dbouk might be their undoing. One cell member worried Canadian law enforcement might “know that Dbouk was related to you…. They are not stupid, and when you take lenses to (Lebanon) you are helping Hezbollah[,] who would use them in operations.”
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Other members of the network appear to have been keenly aware that the dual-use items they were providing Hezbollah were being used to improve the military capabilities of Hezbollah’s Islamic Resistance militia. They also appear to have been aware of the important role Dbouk played in this procurement effort. For example, on February 28, 1999, Hezbollah operatives set off two roadside bombs as an Israeli military convoy drove by in southern Lebanon. An Israeli general was killed in the blast, along with two sergeants and a reporter. On hearing the news, Ali Amhaz congratulated Dbouk for his part in improving Hezbollah military capabilities.
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Dbouk appears to have recognized that his procurement efforts for Hezbollah came under the ultimate authority of Imad Mughniyeh. In April 1999, Dbouk sent
a fax to Hezbollah procurement chief Laqis, informing him that payment was needed for several items Dbouk had purchased. Dbouk boasted that he had sent Laqis “a little gift” in the form of a Palm Pilot and a pair of binoculars, and added, “I’m ready to do any thing you or the Father want me to do and I mean anything!”
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“The Father,” according to US Attorney Robert Conrad, is a reference to Mughniyeh.
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In other instances, Dbouk made explicit references to Mughniyeh. On June 1, 1999, Ali Amhaz told Dbouk about an individual who was speaking openly about his past work for “Haj Imad Mough/Moug/Mugh (ph),” someone who was “down there” and “working with the young men.” Dbouk described Imad as the “whole story” and cautioned Amhaz “to be careful and to pretend to know nothing.” Dbouk was shocked when told that this individual had invited Amhaz to ask Haj Imad about him. “Would anyone bring up Imad’s name [redacted], here (Canada) or in any other country, and stay alive?” Dbouk asked rhetorically.
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According to the testimony of Said Harb, before his time in Canada, Dbouk received “extensive military training” coordinated by the IRGC, including in special operations skills such as parachuting. “Dbouk’s cover is that he works for the Hezbollah al Manar television station,” Harb told the FBI. But Dbouk does more than just produce what Harb described as “Hezbollah propaganda videotapes.” According to Harb, Dbouk told him “he is responsible for reconnaissance and surveillance operations,” which he conducts “in advance of Hezbollah attacks.”
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In other words, Dbouk provided preoperational surveillance for Hezbollah attack squads working under the cover of Hezbollah’s satellite al-Manar television station. The preoperational footage he recorded was used to plan Hezbollah attacks on Israeli positions prior to the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, and the live footage of the actual attack was then used to produce propaganda videos like those seized in the homes of the Charlotte cell members.
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The US Treasury Department referred to Dbouk’s preoperational surveillance when it listed al-Manar as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Entity. According to the Treasury Department, “One al Manar employee [is] engaged in preoperational surveillance for Hezbollah operations under cover of employment by al Manar.”
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When agents searched the home of Charlotte cell leader Mohamad Hammoud in July 2000, they found “a virtual library of Hezbollah propaganda,” including videotapes—some produced by Dbouk—and other literature, some of which talked about “establishing Hezbollah resistance cells around the world.”
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Mohammad Hussein al Husseini, Fawzi Ayub, Mohamad Dbouk—these were not outliers. Hezbollah has been active in Canada since the 1980s, raising money through criminal activities and charity, procuring dual-use items, and sometimes engaging in potentially preoperational surveillance of principally Jewish or Israeli targets.
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The group also produces false travel documents in Canada, and in a few instances fugitive Hezbollah operatives wanted for their roles in terrorist activities have been found hiding in Canada.
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In 1991 during the Gulf War, Canada expelled several Iraqi diplomats for fear of possible Iraqi terrorist reprisal attacks abroad. Speaking anonymously to the press, a government official said the government believed the Iraqi diplomats “had infiltrated Arab nationalist groups in Canada on behalf of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.” Specifically, they sought to “cultivate links with small cells of the Lebanese Shiite group, Hezbollah, in Montreal and Toronto,” as well as with other extremist groups across the country.
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While fears of an Iraqi-inspired revenge attack in Canada did not materialize, reports of an organized Hezbollah presence in Canada were confirmed two years later with the arrest and interrogation of Mohammad Hussein al Husseini.

According to a former senior Canadian intelligence official, by 1997 a covert network of fifty to a hundred Hezbollah operatives—above and beyond the significantly larger pool of Hezbollah sympathizers and supporters—was “directly involved in Hezbollah activities in Canada.” Just a week before his comments, CSIS informed a Canadian court that Hezbollah had established an “infrastructure” in Canada involving individuals who “receive and comply with direction from the Hezbollah leadership hierarchy in Lebanon.”
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The summer 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel had immediate consequences, not only in the region but far beyond as well. In Canada, officials assessed the possible ripple effects back home of Hezbollah’s militant escalation along the Israeli-Lebanese frontier. In an unclassified report, Canada’s Integrated Threat Assessment Centre (ITAC) warned that while Hezbollah had not carried out an attack against Western interests in several years, the group “retains the capability to conduct terrorist attacks against Western targets in Lebanon, and a limited capability to do so internationally.”
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Two days later, ITAC issued another report, this one highlighting the evacuation of Canadians from Lebanon amid the July 2006 war. More than 40,000 Canadians were resident in Lebanon, according to the report, and Ottawa was already in the process of evacuating thousands of them via marine vessels to southern Turkey and Cyprus. Hezbollah posed a threat even to this humanitarian mission, as punctuated by the advanced C-802 missiles Hezbollah fired at an Israeli naval vessel and Cambodian merchant ship off the coast of Lebanon.
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In the 1980s and 1990s, a third ITAC report on Hezbollah in as many weeks noted Hezbollah carried out terrorist attacks in Europe, South America, the Middle East, and Africa, but “these attacks have largely ceased since the mid-1990s.” Yet Canadian intelligence and law enforcement officials remained very concerned about the activities of Hezbollah operatives and supporters in Canada.
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Their concerns were well founded, especially given the frequent travel of Hezbollah supporters back and forth between Canada and Lebanon. Investigators pointed to one case involving several members of “a major Lebanese crime family with ties to Hezbollah” who obtained permanent residency in Canada through illicit means.
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As Canadian officials watched the events in Lebanon in summer 2006, what they saw must have underscored their concerns: One of the Hezbollah spokesmen appearing before the media throughout the July 2006 war had lived in Montreal. He reportedly reminisced
about missing the St. Lawrence River after he returned to Lebanon. Asked about this case, a Montreal-based analyst commented, “Montreal is like a Club Med for Hezbollah.”
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In February 2008, Imad Mughniyeh was killed in Damascus. Attending Mughniyeh’s funeral, Nasrallah accused Israel of the killing and promised an “open war, without boundaries.” The meaning was clear, according to the Canadian intelligence report that followed these events: “Nasrallah [was vowing] to retaliate against Israeli interests anywhere in the world.” Much of the Canadian report remains classified, but the declassified portion listed potential Israeli targets in Montreal and Toronto, indicating Canada was not reassured by the lack of a previous Hezbollah attack on Canadian soil.
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ITAC issued a new report two weeks later, further analyzing the implications for Canada of Hezbollah’s “open war” threat. The report pointed to past Hezbollah attacks in South America as evidence that the group had “engaged in large-scale, mass-casualty, attacks outside the Lebanese-Israeli theater to retaliate against Israel,” and noted that Canada has the world’s fourth largest Jewish population. Beyond the Israeli diplomatic presence in the country, the report added Canada has more than a hundred Jewish institutions, “including schools, synagogues, [and] cultural and political centers.”
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In June 2008, reports emerged that Hezbollah had activated suspected sleeper cells in Canada aimed at carrying out an attack to avenge the death of Imad Mughniyeh four months earlier. According to this report, Canadian intelligence and law enforcement had some twenty suspects under surveillance. One subject, “a known Hezbollah weapons expert,” was followed as he traveled to Canada and was “seen at a firing range south of Toronto, near the U.S. border.”
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Nothing came of this threat reporting, possibly due to Canadian counterterrorism measures, and Canadian intelligence officials have since played down the significance of this surveillance, saying it was not directed toward an imminent plot but rather to build a portfolio of targets for a possible Hezbollah attack in Canada at some later date. Those engaged in this surveillance, the intelligence officials stressed, were lower-level operatives tied to Hezbollah’s Foreign Relations Department, which is responsible for setting up platforms in foreign countries, spotting potential recruits, and organizing the local Shi’a community to be sympathetic toward and to support Hezbollah. These were not IJO operatives who live in Lebanon and just travel abroad for particular missions.
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The following year, a Canadian citizen and Hezbollah IJO operative was reportedly involved in one of three Hezbollah plots foiled in Turkey.
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Speaking in late 2009, just a few months after the foiled plot in Turkey, the commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police warned that Canada was in no way immune from Hezbollah terrorist plots. “While Hezbollah has not articulated any specific grievance with Canada,” he explained, “from its perspective any state that supports Israel or Israeli interests is the enemy, which casts a wide net.”
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At times events abroad have brought Hezbollah’s grievances to Canada’s streets. During Israel’s 2008–9 Operation Cast Lead, pro-Hamas and pro-Hezbollah groups staged rallies in several of Canada’s major cities. At one rally in Montreal on January 10, 2009, young people holding Hezbollah flags shouted, “O Nasrallah,
O Beloved, strike, strike Tel Aviv!” Protesters then began to light an Israeli flag on fire; as soon as the flag was lit, the crowd erupted in cheers. Individuals shouted, “We’ll sacrifice our soul and shed our blood for you, al-Aqsa [mosque]!” as they burned another Israeli flag, tossed it up and down, and proceeded to stamp on it. Protesters waved the Hezbollah and Palestinian flags and shouted in unison, “Nasrallah! Hezbollah!”
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Canadian government officials sometimes refer to their overall program of vigilantly tracking Hezbollah’s activities in the country as “The Hezbollah Investigation,” as if it were one single case. In fact, the terminology signals the government’s holistic approach to the organization, which is a proscribed terrorist group under Canadian law. As part of this government-wide effort, Ottawa appropriately recognizes that Hezbollah affiliation and support occur along a spectrum. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police itself produced a paper aimed at clarifying the types of activity likely to happen at different points on the spectrum, by people who may be Hezbollah sympathizers, supporters, members, and all the way to trained militants and terrorist operatives.
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In July 2012, one such Canadian Hezbollah operative came to the attention of officials who determined he served as the organizer of a devastating bus bombing in Burgas, Bulgaria.
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On the whole, both American and Canadian officials believe that Hezbollah primarily sees North America as a lucrative place to raise funds, procure weapons and equipment, and engage in other types of logistical support activities. The group likely would not want to put these activities at risk by carrying out an attack in the United States or Canada. But in light of Hezbollah’s ties to Iran and tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, and given the Canadian intelligence reporting that Hezbollah has scouted potential targets in Canada for possible reprisal attacks if Iran’s nuclear sites are hit, officials in neither country take much comfort in their countries’ status as cash cows for Hezbollah leaders. Nasrallah’s promise of an “open war” against Israel, and evidence of further surveillance in Canada tied to that pledge, is still further unsettling.