Daily Star - Mahmoud Rafeh Sentenced To Death

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

BEIRUT: A retired member of Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces was sentenced on Thursday to death for having spied for Israel and for his involvement in the murder of two Palestinian militant leaders.
Mahmoud Qassem Rafeh, 63, was convicted of “collaboration and espionage on behalf of the Israeli enemy,” according to the verdict handed down by a military tribunal.
He was also convicted of involvement in the 2006 car bomb murder in the southern coastal town of Sidon of brothers Mahmoud and Nidal Mazjoub, members of the Islamic Jihad group.
A second defendant, Hussein Sleiman Khattab, was convicted in absentia.
Under Lebanese law, they have the right to appeal. At the same time, any death sentenced must be signed both by the country’s prime minister and its president to be carried out.
Rafeh remains accused of the murder of Hizbullah officials Ali Hassan Dib in 1998 and Ali Hussein Saleh in 2003, as well as the 2002 murder of Jihad Jibril, son of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command leader Ahmad Jibril.
The trial for those killings is still under way.
Rafeh was arrested in 2006 and confessed last year to having collaborated with Israeli intelligence agents from as early as 1993. – AFP