Judicial source: Lebanon issues two subpoenas against two Hezbollah officials

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On Tuesday, the Lebanese judiciary issued two subpoena warrants against two Hezbollah officials, according to what a judicial source told Agence France-Presse, against the backdrop of their connection to a shipment of explosives seized by the security services about two weeks ago.

This comes amid increasing pressure on Hezbollah, which is supported by Tehran, which has been weakened by two successive wars with Israel since 2023, and the government decided last year to disarm it.

On the eighth of this month, the security services stopped a truck loaded with 500 kilograms of highly explosive materials while it was being transported from the east of the country towards Beirut. It stopped its driver and a person with him. Hezbollah later admitted that the explosives belonged to it.

The judicial source familiar with the investigations said, “The government commissioner to the military court, Judge Claude Ghanem, issued two subpoenas against two Hezbollah officials, after preliminary investigations into the explosives shipment file led to the identification of their full identities.”

According to the source, the security services are working to determine their locations to arrest them.

A security source reported to Agence France-Presse after the truck was seized that two people inside it were arrested, one of whom was “the son of a Hezbollah official, while the other also belongs to the party.”

During the initial investigations, the detainees gave the military names of two other people who they said coordinated the transfer of explosives, and they are the two people against whom the judiciary issued subpoenas.

Hezbollah MP Hassan Fadlallah said in a press conference in the middle of this month that the party informed “the security and judicial agencies” that “the car and its cargo belong to the resistance,” explaining that they are “capabilities used by the resistance to resist the Israeli occupation.”

Since the beginning of this month, the authorities announced the seizure of three shipments of explosives.

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam affirmed that his government "will deal with the required firmness with any weapon possessed, transferred, or used outside the framework of legality."

President Joseph Aoun stressed on Saturday that the army and security forces are responsible for “implementing the government’s decisions regarding extending state authority, preventing armed demonstrations, and confiscating weapons and ammunition,” explaining that “violators are referred to the judiciary, which fully carries out its duty in implementing the laws and decisions of the political authority.”

Following a devastating war that Hezbollah and Israel fought for more than a year and ended with a ceasefire in November 2024, the Lebanese government approved a plan to disarm the party.

After the renewal of the war between the two parties on March 2, the governments of the two countries entered into direct negotiations under American sponsorship, which resulted in the signing of a framework agreement in June, which specifically stipulated the disarmament of the party, Israel’s gradual withdrawal from large areas it occupied in the south, and the deployment of the Lebanese army, starting from “experimental” areas.

Hezbollah, the only formation in Lebanon that kept its weapons after the end of the civil war (1975-1990) under the pretext of “resisting Israel,” refuses to disarm and engage in direct negotiations.