Israeli intelligence collaborated with Brazil to arrest two alleged Hezbollah members

Jerusalem, Nov 8 (EFE).- Israel assured that its intelligence services participated this Wednesday in an operation by the Brazilian Police that culminated in the arrest in Sao Paulo of two people related to the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, who were allegedly preparing attacks against the Brazilian Jewish community.

Members of the Israeli Mossad, along with other international security agencies, worked with Brazilian forces and “have thwarted a terrorist attack in Brazil, which had been planned by the terrorist organization Hezbollah,” indicates a statement from the Government of Israel.

“It was an extensive network that operated in other countries as well” and that intended “to carry out an attack against Israeli and Jewish targets in Brazil,” he added.

The Federal Police of Brazil carried out searches this Wednesday in eleven homes in the states of Minas Gerais, Sao Paulo and Brasilia, in addition to arresting two people in Sao Paulo related to Hezbollah, a group allied with Iran, the declared enemy of Israel.

The detainees, whose identities have not been revealed, will be accused of the crimes of belonging to a terrorist organization and preparatory acts of terrorism, whose maximum combined sentences reach 15 years and six months in prison.

The alleged Hezbollah members were trying to recruit Brazilians to carry out attacks against Jewish community interests, according to police sources, who requested anonymity.

Since Israel declared war on the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah and other pro-Palestinian militias in southern Lebanon have engaged in crossfire with Israeli forces, causing the biggest escalation since 2006 in that border area.

Hezbollah has had a presence in Brazil, in the area of ​​the triple border with Paraguay and Argentina, for at least three decades, while important Jewish communities and also communities of Lebanese descendants reside in Bril.

Israel has put its citizens and Jews around the world on alert for possible attacks against them in the context of the war with Hamas, which has left more than 1,400 dead on the Israeli side and more than 10,500 in the Gaza Strip. EFE

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