The Australian  |  April 27, 2013

Hezbollah 'Has Sleeper Cells Here'

By John Lyons, Middle East Correspondent

Cleric Sheikh Bilal Radwan says as many as 50 Australians have gone to Syria to join the rebels. Picture: Sylvie le Clezio.

Sheik Bilal Radwan, an influential Sunni cleric in Tripol, also told The Weekend Australian he had knowledge that as many as 50 Australians have gone to Syria to join rebels fighting against the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Sheik Radwan identified three Hezbollah cells operating in Australia -- Abu Abbas, Abu Jafaar and Zaiter.

In an interview in Lebanon, Sheik Radwan said: "There are sleeper cells for Hezbollah in Australia. I warn your government about such a thing.

"It is well known that they have sleeping cells like Abu Abbas, Abu Jafaar and Zaiter.

"All these are operating on the Australian ground."

Sheik Radwan is a key figure in Lebanon's Sunni Islam community and is at the frontline of the battle against Shia Islam.

Hezbollah -- the Party of God -- is one of the main political opponents of Sheik Radwan and other Sunnis. Sheik Radwan said he believed as many as 50 Australians had joined the fight in Syria against the Assad regime.

He said most of the Australians he knows who are fighting in Syria are about 30 years of age, but some are in their early 50s.

He said he has asked some why they were going and "they were so determined to go to Syria and fight".

Sheik Radwan said the Australians in Syria were both Muslim and non-Muslim.

The Assad regime has a heavy proportion of Alawites, an off-shoot of Shia Islam aligned to Iran.

Sheik Radwan said the involvement of Australians had not been solely military. "For example, I know of an Australian surgeon who came all the way from Australia just to help the Syrian people and went into Syria and is still in Syria," he said.

This week, the EU's anti-terror chief Gilles de Kerchove estimated that about 500 Europeans were fighting with the rebels in Syria.

He said this posed a challenge for intelligence services. "Not all of them are radical when they leave, but most likely many of them will be radicalised there, will be trained," he told the BBC.

"And as we've seen this might lead to a serious threat when they get back."

The BBC also reported that Britain and Belgium had increased efforts to track how people were recruited.

It said officials in The Netherlands had raised the terror threat level to "substantial", partly due to concerns about returning citizens.

Sheik Radwan said due to sanctions on Iran, Hezbollah was relying more on drugs and prostitution to fund terrorist attacks such as the one in Bulgaria in July last year, which killed five Israelis.

He said Hezbollah was now seeking "to create sleeper cells and to create chaos in Saudi Arabia, the UAE (United Arab Emirates) and different countries".

Original article here.