Missing Israeli Air Force officer Ron Arad, photographed by Amal militants in Lebanon in 1987. (Wikipedia)
Lebanese authorities are investigating the recent disappearance of a retired security officer whose brother was apparently involved in the 1986 capture of Israeli Air Force navigator Ron Arad, a Lebanese judicial official told AFP on December 23.
Arad and pilot Yishai Aviram were on a mission to attack Palestinian targets around the town of Maghdouche in southern Lebanon on October 16 of 1986, when their F-4 Phantom II fell. Israel claims that a bomb dropped by the warplane exploded prematurely, forcing both crewmen to eject. However, Lebanese media reported at the time that the warplane was hit by anti-aircraft fire.
Aviram was located by an Israeli Bell AH-1 Cobra a few hours later, and escaped by clinging to one of its landing skids as it flew away while under heavy enemy fire, but Arad was captured by the Lebanese Amal. He has long been presumed dead, but his remains were never returned.
The recent disappearance of Lebanese retired General Security officer Ahmad Shukr brought the fate of Arad back to the spotlight.
The Lebanese judicial official who spoke to AFP said that Shukr “was lured from his hometown of Nabi Sheet” to a location near the city of Zahle in the east of the country, where he disappeared.
Shukr is the brother of Hassan Shukr, who “was a fighter in the group that participated in capturing Israeli pilot Ron Arad after his plane was downed,” a source close to the family told the French news agency, adding that Hassan was killed in 1988 in a battle between Israeli forces and local fighters, including members of Hezbollah.
The group in question was led by then-Amal commander Mustafa Dirani, who later defected and joined the ranks of Hezbollah.
The judicial official said that information indicated Ahmad Shukr “was lured by two Swedes who arrived in Lebanon two days before his kidnapping, and that one left through Beirut airport the day Shukr disappeared.”
Investigators are looking into the possibility that he was killed by Israeli agents or transferred to Israel, according to the official.
More details about Shukr and his disappearance were revealed by the United Kingdom-based Arabic newspaper Asharq al-Awsat on December 24.
Shukr’s brother Abdel Salam revealed to the newspaper that a Lebanese expatriate who lives in Congo was involved in luring his brother.
The expatriate contacted Shukr months earlier to lease an apartment from him, and later asked him to help a wealthy businessman from Africa named Salim Kassab buy a plot of land in Lebanon.
“The expatriate went down and inspected the plot of land. Two weeks after he left, he called to say that the wealthy Kassab had agreed to buy the land and would be visiting Lebanon. He asked to meet him there at 4:30 p.m. on the day Ahmed disappeared [December 17],” Abdel Salam said.
He noted that the expatriate “insisted on this time because it suited the buyer, despite Ahmed’s insistence that it would be dark in the area by then, and the nature of the land would be obscured.”
He said that the expatriate “apologized for not attending, claiming that his leg was broken, and that the businessman would visit the place alone, accompanied by Ahmed.”
“We know nothing about him except from security and judicial leaks,” he added, “what we know is that the kidnappers had rented a house in Zahle and removed all their fingerprints from it after kidnapping Ahmed,” and that “surveillance cameras recorded the movement of the car towards the municipality of Sawira in the Western Bekaa, where the evidence disappeared after that,” noting that Sawira was used as a smuggling route between Lebanon and Syria.
The same report revealed that Shukr is a relative of Hezbollah military chief Fuad Shukr, whom Israel assassinated last year.
The newspaper also confirmed that Arad was held for a while in a house belonging to the Shukr family in the town of Nabi Chit in southern Lebanon.
Arad has been presumed dead since at least the mid-1990s. The last proof of life emerged in 1988, and there were reports of Amal handing him over to Iran or Hezbollah. Israel has not stopped looking for his remains, however.
Dirani himself was abducted by Israel in 1994 and released a decade later in an exchange with Hezbollah. More recently in 2021, reports alleged that Mossad agents had kidnapped an Iranian general from Syria to find new information on Arad. The general was transferred to South Africa and released later.
Taking these incidents into account, the most likely scenario is that Shukr was abducted by Mossad from Lebanon and moved to a third country. Just like Dirani and the Iranian general, he will likely end up getting released.
Still, the incident shows that Israel has gotten more bolder with its intelligence operations in Lebanon after deeply weakening Hezbollah.
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