The co-owner of Amigo Supermarket, Mustapha Fawaz, and two other Lebanese, accused by the Federal Government of being terrorists, Abdallah Thanini and Talal Ahmed Roda, on Monday told an Abuja Federal High Court that agents of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, tortured them for 14 days while they were in the cell of the State Security Service in Abuja.
Mossad is a Hebrew word, which means Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations.
The forms of torture, which the Lebanese said they suffered in the hands of the Mossad agents, included beatings, psychological exploitation, deprivation of sleep, abuse and threats that they would be raped by Nigerian men in prison, among several others.
Fawaz and his co-accused persons are being tried over 16 counts charge bordering on terrorism and illegal importation of arms following their arrest in connection with an armoury in Bompai, Kano. They were accused of belonging to the Hezbollah military wing, which the Federal Government described as an international terrorist organisation.
But the suspects are insisting that Hezbollah is a political party, which was established to provide resistance to the occupation of South Lebanon by Israeli forces in the 1990s.
The hostile relationship between Israel and Lebanon has gradually become the subject matter of the trial.
Before the accused persons opened their defence, SSS operatives, who testified for the prosecution, had claimed that they were the only ones who interrogated the suspects, but lawyers to the Lebanese insisted that their clients were quizzed by “white men.”
Testifying at the continuation of the trial, the first accused person, Fawaz, who was led in evidence by defence counsel, Ahmed Raji, SAN, informed the court that the said ‘white men’ were Israeli Mossad agents.
He narrated how the Israelis interrogated and subjected them to torture for about 14 days in the Abuja cell of the SSS.
Fawaz said, “Around 8am on May 11, 2013, I was taken to the interrogation room where I met Israeli Mossad agents. During my interrogation for 14 days, I was interrogated by six white Israeli Mossad agents and one white man with blue eyes and a mask on his face.
“They mostly asked me about Hezbollah – my link to Hezbollah but they concentrated mostly on Lebanon. They asked whether I know if there were any weapons stored anywhere in Lebanon, and whether I know the identities of people that have been trained by Hezbollah and are in Lebanon.”
The second accused person, Thanini, who also testified in defence of the suspects, narrated a similar encounter with the Mossad agents in the SSS cell.
Thanini said although the agents did not introduce themselves, he was able to ascertain that they were Israelis from their accent, and some Hebrew words they used.
Meanwhile, Justice Adeniyi Ademola has ordered that inspections should be carried out at Amigo Supermarket and Wonderland Amusement Park Resort twice every week.
The order followed a plea by defence counsel, Raji, who informed the court that valuables in the two businesses would get spoit if they were not attended to.
The inspection is to be conducted by selected employees of the enterprises, in company with SSS operatives, on Tuesday and Thursday.
Justice Ademola ordered that names of the concerned employees be forwarded to the SSS before the inspection days.
The accused persons closed their defence on Monday, and the matter has been adjourned to September 30, 2013.
Punch Nigeria
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