Report: Czechs Kidnapped in Lebanon Sue Prague over 'Blunders'

by Naharnet Newsdesk 18 August 2016, 20:10

Four Czechs who were kidnapped in Lebanon last year are suing the Czech Republic for financial compensation, arguing that if the country’s intelligence services had been better coordinated they may never have had to endure a grueling period of captivity, state-run Radio Prague reported on Thursday.

Five Czechs – a lawyer, a military intelligence officer, an Arabic interpreter and two TV reporters – were traveling in Lebanon last year when they were abducted.

Now four of the five are demanding financial compensation from the Czech state amounting to CZK 40 million, Radio Prague said.

“At the end of July the Ministry of Finance received a request for compensation for non-pecuniary damages pertaining to the four aggrieved in connection with their abduction in Lebanon. Each of them is claiming compensation of CZK 10 million. The aggrieved are claiming the referred to compensation as a result of maladministration,” Czech Finance Ministry spokesman Michal Žurovec told the radio network.

The four former hostages say that the Czech civilian intelligence service had information that reprisals for the arrest of Lebanese citizen Ali Fayad in Prague were planned. The fact that his case came to court also helped lead to their abduction, they argue. One of the kidnap victims, Jan Švarc, was Fayad’s lawyer.

Another of the plaintiffs, translator Adam Honsi, describes some of what they had to go through.

“We have suffered serious illnesses. One of us was taking six kinds of medicine prior to the abduction for his heart and cardiovascular disease but all they gave him was aspirin. We have also suffered from mental problems. Our scariest experience was when during negotiations the kidnappers told the Czech side that if they didn’t fulfill their demands they would sell one or two of us to Islamic State,” Honsi added.

The five Czechs were kidnapped in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. They were reportedly freed in a deal involving Prague's release of Lebanese citizen Ali Fayad, who had been held there at Washington's request on charges of selling arms to a Colombian rebel group.

Lebanon's State Commissioner to the Military Court charged Fayad in mid-March with backing a “Colombian terrorist organization” and selling arms and ammunition to the group.

Fayad was one of a group of three men who were arrested in Prague in 2014 while allegedly trying to sell weapons to undercover U.S. law enforcement agents who pretended to be from a Colombian rebel group.

Fayad returned to Beirut on February 1, the same day the five Czechs who went missing in Lebanon in July 2015 were set free in a swap deal struck by the Czech government for their release.

https://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/215018