Report: Czechs 'Kidnap' Linked to Prague's Arrest of 'Hizbullah Suspect'

Five Czechs who disappeared Saturday in the Bekaa region were likely kidnapped in connection with the Czech Republic's recent arrest of a man suspected of having ties to Hizbullah, a media report said Sunday.

Citing “intersecting security reports,” MTV said the Lebanese driver who vanished with the Czechs, Saeb Taan, is “a brother of Ali Taan, also known as Ali Fayyad, who was apprehended in the Czech Republic during the recent wave of arrests that targeted Hizbullah security cadres in Europe.”

However, the abduction “has not been claimed by any party” and “no contacts have been made with any side in Lebanon or the Czech Republic, MTV added.

It noted that the Czechs were in Lebanon on a “journalistic mission.”

The cameras that were found in their abandoned car “were used only hours prior to their abduction and they conducted a TV interview with a local official in the Baalbek region,” MTV said.

“He was the last person who came in contact with them,” the TV network added.

It said they conducted two interviews that had to do with the issues of the restive northeastern border town of Arsal, the Syrian refugees, and the ongoing battles in the outskirts of the Lebanese border towns between Hizbullah and Syria-based groups.

Meanwhile, a security source confirmed to AFP that "the five Czechs have indeed been kidnapped," saying several leads were being chased in the case.

The sources said the motive behind the kidnapping was still a mystery and the five men have not yet been publicly identified.

"The security services are working on multiple leads but nothing is clear yet," one source said.

A spokeswoman for the Czech foreign ministry confirmed Sunday that five Czech citizens and their local driver have gone missing in Lebanon.

CNN quoted the spokeswoman, Michaela Lagronova, as saying that a "massive" operation is underway to find the missing people. She declined to comment on speculation about how they disappeared.

The Czech government was informed by Lebanese authorities on Saturday about the missing citizens.

The search for those missing is being conducted by Lebanese security forces, Lagronova said. She declined to name the missing people, although she said their identities are known to authorities.

Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek spoke by telephone Saturday with his Lebanese counterpart Jebran Bassil, and the two ministers agreed to work together to do everything possible to find the missing people, Lagronova said.

As Safir newspaper reported Sunday that Ali Taan, aka Ali Fayyad, was recently arrested in the Czech Republic on “arms trade charges.”

“Fayyad has the Ukrainian nationality and he used to occupy an official post in Ukraine,” the newspaper said.

Pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat meanwhile reported that the man's family had organized several sit-ins outside the Czech and U.S. embassies in Beirut to press for his release.

The five Czechs, along with their Lebanese driver Saeb Taan, a resident of Nabatiyeh, have been missing since Friday night, when their car was discovered in the Kefraya region in the western part of the Bekaa.

"We don't know what happened to them but we assume they were kidnapped because we found their passports and documents and belongings in the car," a Lebanese military source said Saturday.

"We are carrying out searches of local hotels and other places in the area," he added.

State-run National News Agency said the car contained personal suitcases, scattered clothes, three cameras and five Czech passports inside.

The Voice of Lebanon radio later said that the father of Taan had filed a complaint to the police station in al-Dweir and claimed that his son has disappeared in mysterious circumstances.

VDL added that the five Czechs had entered Lebanon on the seventh of June.

Kidnappings have declined in Lebanon since the 1975-1990 civil war, when some 100 foreigners, mostly Americans and West Europeans, were snatched.

But some cases have been recently recorded, often for ransom and involving Lebanese as well as foreigners.

In the most high-profile case in recent years, seven Estonian cyclists were kidnapped at gunpoint in the Bekaa in 2011, being released some four months later.

The group claiming the abduction was previously unknown, and its motives were never entirely clear.

A ransom was reportedly paid, but that was never confirmed by any side.

Y.R.