Lebanon18 September, 20263 min read
Lebanon Indicts 14, Including Hezbollah Official Yasser Al-Aldin, Over Syria Attack Plans
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14 people indicted by Lebanese Military Court for planning attacks in Syria, incl. Hezbollah official. Includes former Syrian intelligence officer from Assad era and training Assad loyalists.
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Indictment in Lebanon
Lebanon’s government commissioner at the Military Court indicted 14 people, including a Hezbollah official and a Syrian intelligence officer from the era of the toppled Syrian regime, on charges of planning to carry out attacks in Syria. The indictment followed Lebanese authorities’ early-September arrests of five people suspected of planning attacks on the forces of the new authorities in Damascus, with the suspects allegedly having received training from Hezbollah, which denied the charges. A Lebanese judicial source told Syria Now that the Hezbollah official was named Yasser Al-Aldin and nicknamed "Al-Alaa," and that he was supervising the smuggling of network members and their training in camps for the party in eastern Lebanon.
The source added that the operations were run by the commander of the so-called Desert Forces, Mohamed Jaber, who is currently in Moscow and close to Bashar al-Assad. The government commissioner indicted the 14 on charges of "forming a gang of wicked people, training in weapons, explosives, and sniper rifles, and operating drones, with the aim of carrying out terrorist acts on the Syrian coast."
Court charges and denials
In Beirut, Al-Monitor reported that a military court charged five people, including an Assad-era Syrian officer and Hezbollah members, with running a cross-border security network planning attacks in Syria’s coastal region. Al-Monitor said the judicial official who spoke to Agence France-Presse reported that Judge Claude Ghanem charged the five detainees with “forming a criminal gang [and] receiving training in military weapons, explosives, sniper rifles, and operating drones, with the aim of carrying out terrorist acts on the Syrian coast.” The same report said the nine others were reportedly charged in absentia with the same offenses, after the five were arrested earlier this month on suspicion of belonging to a cross-border network linked to Hezbollah.
Al-Monitor also stated that Hezbollah’s media relations office denied any ties to the group. Al-Jazira Net similarly described that a Lebanese judicial source told Syria Now that Yasser Alaa Eldin works within Hezbollah’s liaison and coordination unit, with his name appearing in investigations as the execution liaison between the party and the network members preparing activities inside Syria, especially along the Syrian coast.
Regional fallout and targets
The allegations center on Syria’s coastal region, where groups of Assad regime remnants attacked security and military checkpoints in March 2025, causing deaths and injuries, and where President Al-Sharaa formed a committee to uncover the causes and identify those responsible.
Al-Jazira Net said the Military Criminal Court in Aleppo issued judgments yesterday, Thursday, against four defendants for violations in the areas of the Syrian coast during March 2025, with a ruling expected next Thursday against additional defendants.
Al-Monitor tied the case to the post-Assad reshuffling, noting that after the fall of the Assad regime to a rebel offensive in December 2024, Damascus asked the Lebanese government to extradite over 200 senior officers to face charges of war crimes.
Al-Monitor also said Lebanese authorities extradited Maj. Gen. Adel Issa, who once commanded the Syrian army’s 17th Division, in mid-August, and that eight other former regime officers were handed over to Syrian authorities in early September.
Al-Jazira Net added that Lebanon handed over a former senior officer, a brigadier, to the Syrian authorities in August after his arrest under an arrest warrant issued by Damascus, which accuses him of crimes of "murder and crimes against humanity" during his military service.