The
leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah movement has denied allegations linking
the organisation to a Colombian drug trafficking network.
Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a televised address on Saturday that
claims that a drug gang was providing funding for Hezbollah were
propaganda. "There is an attempt to damage
the image of Hezbollah through lies and allegations such as the news
published recently in the matter of Colombia," Nasrallah said in remarks
broadcast on Hezbollah's al-Manary television channel.
"Unfortunately many Arab satellite networks did broadcast that report
but without our denial."
Colombian authorities said on Tuesday that more than 100 people had been
arrested in a number of countries after a drug and money-laundering
operation which stretched from South America to Asia was broken up.
The attorney general's office said three of the men who had been
detained inside Colombia were suspected of co-ordinating drug smuggling
and channelling funds to Hezbollah and other groups.
The Hezbollah secretary-general also rejected a report on a Iraqi
website which said that he had been poisioned and had only been saved by
emergency treatment from Iranian doctors.
"As you can see, I'm sitting here in front of you and I'm telling you
there has been no poisoning. This is just an invention of websites,"
Nasrallah said.
The al-Malaf website said on Wednesday that Nasrallah, who is rarely
seen in public because of fears for his safety, had survived an
assassination bid in which a "highly toxic chemical substance" had been
used.
Nasrallah said that the report could have been "part of the
psychological war" against Hezbollah aimed at portraying internal
divisions within the group, which is backed by both Tehran and Damascus.
Source:
Agencies |
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