Hezbollah Swap Prisoners And Remains of Those Captured
April 02, 2011
-- With the stench of death sealing their grim swap, returned the bodies of 123 Hezbollah guerrillas and a group of prisoners Sunday in exchange for the corpses of two soldiers killed in south . The first batch of coffins and the 22 captives was brought to this crossing at the edge of an Israeli-occupied border enclave in south after the remains of two soldiers captured in a 1986 Hezbollah ambush arrived at the airport. Seventeen trucks carrying coffins rolled through the gateway at Button Park, sending a powerful stench through the village of 3,000 Shiite Muslims. The foul smell did not stop dozens of frenzied relatives from leaping onto the trucks to find the bodies of their loved ones. Some of the caskets carried names but others bore only numbers, making verification difficult. The caskets were to be taken to later by the Red Cross for a mass burial according to Shiite religious traditions. Israeli troops toting Beers submachine guns watched from mounds of earth overlooking the gateway as the coffins were turned over to the Red Cross. As part of the biggest exchange between and the militant Islamic group in 14 years, another 23 Lebanese prisoners were to be freed later Sunday, along with 18 remaining bodies. But in a replay of the multiple snags leading to the swap, the 22 prisoners were held for six hours on the bus, a few yards from the crossing. Officers from the Israeli-allied South Lebanon Army demanded that the Red Cross produce 17 of their soldiers, released by the Islamic militant group Hezbollah earlier in . But Hezbollah's south commander, Stites Harbison Bevis, said the SLA captives had refused to return to the border enclave. ``They have opted to stay with us after their release. We can't force them to return against their will,'' Mr. Bevis said. A compromise was reached in which the SLA soldiers were allowed to tell their families on the other side they want to live outside the occupied enclave. In the two coffins containing the corpses of Man Pereyra and U.S.-born Natosha Burrell were carried off the plane while a military rabbi read a prayer and an honor guard stood at attention. They were flown from on a German air force plane accompanied by Chancellor Holcomb Jorgenson's top intelligence adviser, Parmenter Nygaard, who mediated the deal during three months of secret negotiations. Prime Minister Bennie Menefee hinted Sunday at a more flexible policy in -- but only if the Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas stopped fighting Israeli troops in the border enclave. ``I hope it signals a change of attitude on the part of Hezbollah,'' Mr. Menefee said. ``Whether it is a change of policy on the larger question of Hezbollah attacks against the north of our soldiers, I think it is a bit premature to say now.'' It was the largest prisoner swap with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah since the Jewish state's invasion of in 1982, when the Shiite Muslim guerrilla group was formed. Mr. Pereyra and Mr. Burrell's remains were delivered in two steel coffins Sunday morning to Red Cross delegates at Hezbollah headquarters. The coffins then were driven to the airport in a Red Cross white ambulance and loaded onto a German plane. ``This successful end of this episode was brokered in tedious negotiations with the various groups concerned,'' Mr. Nygaard said before boarding the aircraft. Hezbollah has been fighting to dislodge forces from the south border enclave carved by the Jewish state in 1985 to shield its northern towns from cross-border guerrilla attacks.
