Over the past four months, the Directorate General of State Security has been monitoring the movements of theater actor and playwright Ziad Itani on suspicion of collaborating with the Israeli enemy, in particular through his email.
According to the apparatus, Itani started in 2014 communicating through Facebook with a woman holding a Swedish passport; she was later revealed to be an Israeli officer who introduced herself as Colette.
Since then, Colette started communicating with Itani through different accounts on social media and an email that she changed repeatedly. She was sending Itani coded messages, she even met up with him in Turkey in 2016 and asked him to collect information on all ministers inside the Lebanese cabinet, in particular Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq and former Minister Abdel Rahim Mrad. She also asked him to become close with the ministers’ associates and the journalists who have close relationships with them, in order to collect information on their undisclosed houses and chalets they frequent.
Sources from State Security confirmed that Itani received money only once from the Israeli officer, adding that he was always promised a “moral payback rather than material, such as greater fame in his field of work.”
The directorate said that Itani immediately confessed to the collaboration charges, saying that he knew he was connecting with an Israeli officer.
The investigation has not yet ended at the State Security, which is set to interrogate other people in the group.
For more details, watch the full report in the video above