The IDF's Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee said that Abu Hussein Sajid, who joined Hezbollah in 1983 and served in a number of operational positions in southern Lebanon, is in charge of the establishment of a unit in Golan.
"Abu Hussein Sajid was jailed by the American forces in 2007, as he was responsible for kidnapping and killing five American soldiers in Karbala," Adraee said in a post on Twitter.
"He was then released after Hezbollah's intervention before the Iraqi government, and the lack of evidence. In 2018, he was sent to Syria with the aim of establishing a unit," Adraee stated.
The Israel Defense Forces said Wednesday that it had exposed a nascent Hezbollah terror cell established in a border village on the Syrian Golan Heights in recent months, and vowed to prevent the terrorist group from operating against Israel from Syrian soil, even at the risk of a sparking small-scale conflict.
The Iran-backed, Lebanon-based group has been trying to create a front on the Syrian Golan for years, but was unable to gain a sufficient foothold in the area until now.
However, Syrian dictator Bashar
Assad’s conquest of the border area this summer gave the regime-allied group an
opportunity to again try to establish the necessary infrastructure with which
it could threaten Israel near the border.