Two Plead Guilty in Plan to Aid Hezbollah
Two shipping company employees, one Arab and one Israeli, have pleaded guilty in connection with a planned shipment of night-vision goggles to the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah, authorities said Tuesday.
Naji Antoine Abi Khalil, 40, of Montreal and originally from Lebanon, entered three guilty pleas Tuesday in Little Rock, including attempting to provide material support for Hezbollah.
The U.S. attorney’s office in New York also announced that Tomer Grinberg had pleaded guilty July 28 to conspiracy to export sensitive military equipment without proper licenses.
Both men face the possibility of long prison terms. They were arrested in New York in May after an investigation by FBI agents, Scotland Yard detectives and Canadian Mounties.
The U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment on how an Israeli citizen got involved in supplying Hezbollah, a group that denies Israel’s right to exist.
The FBI said it used a witness wearing a wire to catch Khalil discussing a shipment of night-vision goggles to Hezbollah in Athens. Khalil, who was chairman of the Canadian import-export company New Line Services, told an undercover FBI agent that he would create false documents to get the shipment to Hezbollah undetected.
Grinberg, who worked for the Tober Group in Brooklyn, N.Y., joined Khalil and the undercover agent at a Manhattan storage facility to pick up $5,000 worth of night-vision goggles and infrared aiming devices, designed for mounting on M-16 rifles.
The two men were arrested after Khalil accepted a $2,500 down payment from the agent.
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