Word: toufeili
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...image of the resistance [against Israel] and the image of Islam," he says. The stern, no-nonsense cleric is not given to naming names and recounting anecdotes. He keeps his many secrets to himself. But he did offer one intriguing episode from the hostage-taking era. In early 1986, Toufeili says he was in regular telephone contact with the Lebanese kidnappers, urging them to release their captives. In May of that year he says he extracted a pledge that all the hostages would be released within a week. A day later, he was visited by the head of Syrian military...
...arrangement collapsed, Toufeili says, when, just three days after securing the promise from the kidnappers, Robert McFarlane, the former National Security Advisor to President Reagan, made his now infamous secret trip to Tehran, accompanied by Colonel Oliver North, as part of the arms-for-hostages dealings...
...discovered then that the hostages were a big treasure for Iran. They wanted to sell the hostages piece by piece," Toufeili says. The story is impossible to verify. To this day, the identity of the kidnappers remains unknown and Toufeili says he has no intention of breaking his silence...
...While willing to fess up to the bombings, Toufeili insists that the kidnappings of Westerners "had nothing to with Hizballah. Nothing at all." Indeed, as he puts it, Iran's policy of using Lebanese Shi'ites to kidnap Westerners was a "mistake" which he tried to redress...
...Toufeili's unbending nature placed him at odds with the younger and more pragmatic generation of Hizballah officials who gained prominence at the end of the Lebanese civil war in 1990. And he crossed swords with the Lebanese government in 1997 when he launched a campaign of civil disobedience to protest official neglect of the impoverished Bekaa. Toufeili insists he does not dwell on the past, and spends most of his time studying weighty tracts on Islamic jurisprudence. Yet one cannot help wondering what dark secrets swirl in his memory when he gazes out of his window at the imposing...