More than 25 years later, militant still atop Hezbollah's list for swap

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Hezbollah put Samir Kuntar at the top of the list of prisoners it wants back in exchange for two captured Israeli soldiers.

Family members in Beirut are hopeful about the release of Kuntar, who is serving multiple life sentences for murder and terrorism in Israel's Hadarim Prison for his role in a 1979 raid on a northern Israel town that left four Israelis dead, including a 4-year-old girl.

"I feel that it is finally time for him," said brother Bassam Kuntar, a Beirut newspaper editor who was an infant when his brother, then 16, went on a mission inside Israel for the Palestine Liberation Front.

In 2004, Israel was reported as willing to release Kuntar in exchange for information from Hezbollah about the fate of Israeli airman Ron Arad, who has been missing since his plane was downed over Lebanon the same year.

One of Kuntar's three partners in the 1979 Nahariya raid, Ahmed al-Abras, was released from custody in an earlier prisoner swap.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz, quoting government sources, reported that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his government are prepared for a prisoner exchange as a step in the way out of the current crisis. However, the newspaper reported that the Olmert government would not make a deal for Kuntar.

Earlier this week, the Kuntar family appealed to the families of Israeli soldiers Ehud Goldwasser, 31, and Eldad Regev, 26, to put pressure on the Israeli government for Samir Kuntar's release. The two soldiers were captured in a July 12 Hezbollah raid inside Israel that sparked the Israeli invasion and bombing campaign over the past three weeks.

Hostage swapping is a common and deadly game in the Middle East. Lebanon Minister of Labor Tarrad Hamadeh, a university philosophy professor and Hezbollah sympathizer, said in an interview that the main motive for the group's brash July 12 raid into Israel was to grab hostages to use as bargaining chips.

In addition to Kuntar, the two other names on the list are Yahye Skaff, 46, and Nissim Mousa N'isr, 38.

Israel has not confirmed that it is holding Skaff, a Lebanese Sunni Muslim accused of taking part in a 1978 attack near Haifa in which 11 Fatah fighters infiltrated Israel by sea. They killed a photographer on a beachfront kibbutz, then killed a taxi driver and hijacked a passenger bus, shooting at other cars from the bus. In all, 35 people were killed and nearly 100 injured.

The final name on the exchange list, N'isr, is the only one with alleged connections to Hezbollah. A Lebanese-born Israeli citizen, N'isr is the son of a Jewish mother and a Shiite father. He was living in the industrial town of Holon when he was arrested in 2002 and convicted of spying for Hezbollah.

Complaining about financial hardship, he was put in contact with Hezbollah, which allegedly asked him to provide a map and photographs of Tel Aviv gas and electricity facilities.

N'isr denied that he was a spy. He was sentenced to six years in jail in 2002.

Twenty-nine years after his arrest, Samir Kuntar is the longest-serving confirmed Lebanese prisoner in Israeli jails.

The Kuntars are members of the minority population of Lebanese Druze, an offshoot of Shiism. They come from the Alley area of Mount Lebanon overlooking Beirut.

The Palestine Liberation Front has been associated with several notorious operations, including the 1984 hijacking of the Greek cruise ship the Achille Lauro. When the cruise-ship hijackers listed their demands, Kuntar's release topped the list.

Los Angeles Times staff writer Laura King in Jerusalem and special correspondent Maha al-Azar in Beirut contributed to this report.