Lebanon charges 5 in alleged Hezbollah operation to train Assad loyalists

BEIRUT — A military court in Lebanon charged five people including an Assad-era Syrian officer with training and forming groups to carry out attacks in Syria on Thursday, in the latest move by Lebanese authorities targeting remnants of the ousted regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

What happened: The five people, three Syrians and two Lebanese nationals, were arrested by Lebanese authorities earlier this month on suspicion of belonging to a cross-border network linked to Hezbollah.

According to a judicial official who spoke to Agence France-Presse, the alleged cell of 14 people smuggled people from Syria into Lebanon from the northern border and trained them at a camp in the eastern Baalbek-Hermel region before sending them back to Syria’s coastal region.

Hezbollah’s media relations office denied any ties to the group.

The judicial official told AFP on Thursday that Judge Claude Ghanem charged the five detainees with “forming a criminal gang [and] receiving training in military weapons, explosives, sniper rifles, and operating drones, with the aim of carrying out terrorist acts on the Syrian coast.” The nine others were reportedly charged in absentia with the same offenses.

The detainees revealed in their initial interrogations that the network brought more than 40 members of Assad's forces from the Syrian coast through illegal crossings in northern Lebanon, in batches of five people at a time.

Among the detainees is Syrian Col. Manaf Ali Safi, an intelligence officer who headed one of the former Syrian regime's security branches.

The detainees also allegedly admitted that Hezbollah operatives trained the recruits under the direction of a man known as Hajj Alaa, who according to local reports managed logistics and housing for operatives in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Zahle in the east and Haret Saida in the south.

He also paid the trainees via an association affiliated with Hezbollah. According to LBCI, a warrant was issued for the arrest of Alaa, who remains at large.

Judicial sources revealed to Asharq al-Awsat earlier this month that the network was operating under the direction of Maj. Gen. Mohammed Jaber, the former commander of the Syrian army's Desert Brigade. Jaber now resides in Moscow.

More than 1,400 people were killed in a wave of violence that hit Syria's coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus in March 2025. The unrest began after the Syrian government claimed its forces had been ambushed by militias affiliated with the former Assad regime. Syria’s new rulers deployed forces to the area to quell the insurgency, triggering a wave of revenge killings against the Alawite community, a group that had been a key base of support for Assad throughout the Syrian civil war.

Why it matters: After the fall of the Assad regime to a rebel offensive in December 2024, several high-ranking regime officials and members are believed to have sought refuge inside Lebanon.

Earlier this year, Damascus asked the Lebanese government to extradite over 200 senior officers to face charges of war crimes.

In mid-August, Lebanese authorities extradited Maj. Gen. Adel Issa, who once commanded the Syrian army’s 17th Division, the first such transfer since the fall of Assad. Eight other former regime officers were handed over to Syrian authorities in early September.

Know more: After the fall of Assad, Lebanese and Syrian authorities sought to reset relations that had been fraught with conflict and tension for decades stemming from the Syrian military occupation of Lebanon from 1976 until the withdrawal of Syrian troops in 2005.

Hezbollah, which had enjoyed widespread influence in Lebanon thanks to Iranian funding and support, sent thousands of fighters to Syria to fight alongside Assad’s forces against the rebels throughout the civil war. The group had also smuggled weapons into Lebanon from Iran via Syria.

In July, Syrian security forces announced the seizure of a large shipment of weapons smuggled across the Syrian-Iraqi border intended for Lebanon’s Hezbollah. The group denied conducting any activity in Syria.

Syria's security authorities say they have dismantled several Hezbollah-linked cells preparing attacks in the country in the past year.