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Israel again delays Lebanese prisoners release

JERUSALEM: Israel's prison authority said on Sunday it was delaying for a second time the release of 13 Lebanese detainees held for over a decade as bargaining chips for missing Israeli troops.

The detainees were to be released early on Monday following a landmark ruling by Israel's highest court last week that it was illegal for the government to hold prisoners in the hope they could be swapped for missing soldiers.

A prison spokeswoman said the release was delayed because the family of missing airman Ron Arad had appealed to Israel's High Court. In an unprecedented decision, the court decided the appeal would be brought before 11 judges.

Nine judges made the original ruling last week.

"The minute the High Court of Justice gives its decision, if the decision is still to release, two hours will be needed to release them," the spokeswoman told Reuters.

The prisoners were originally to be freed on Friday, but the army delayed at the last minute for "operational reasons". A spokeswoman said the army would meet the Monday deadline set by the court.

Batya Arad, the mother of the airman whose plane was shot down over Lebanon in 1986, has expressed anger over the High Court's ruling on Wednesday.

Arad's last-minute appeal was submitted to the court just five hours before the prisoners were to cross the Israeli-Lebanese border to freedom, Israel's Channel One television reported.

Her appeal argues that since six judges favoured last week's ruling and three opposed it, the full High Court panel should rule, the television reported, adding that such a process was unprecedented in Israel's court system.

The court has ruled that only detainees found to be threats to Israel's national security could be held in "administrative detention", the Israeli term for incarceration without trial.

Two top-ranking guerrilla officials, Hizbollah cleric Sheikh Abdel Karim Obeid and Mustapha Dirani of the Amal movement, who are being held by the Israeli army, were not to be released on Monday.

Dirani, who was security chief of Amal when Arad went missing, was snatched from his home in Lebanon in 1994. Israeli commandos abducted Obeid in 1989.

Israel's Justice Ministry said on Sunday it would seek to extend their detention. It said the two are "enemies" of the state of Israel because their organisations are conducting a guerrilla war against Israel on the Israeli-Lebanese border.

"The detention is also possible under international law, so long as enemies are (being detained) - and especially enemy leaders," the ministry said in a statement.

Hizbollah and Amal have, since 1985, been fighting Israel's occupation of a self-declared security zone in south Lebanon.

Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Barak has pledged to withdraw his troops from the zone by July.-Reuters