Hizbollah boasts of how it lured colonel to Beirut

The plot thickens. "We did not kidnap anyone in Switzerland," Sayed Hassan Nasrallah told us with a grim smile. "The Mossad spy was entrapped here in Beirut." There were no documents for journalists to see, no photocopy of the allegedly false passport used by Elhanan Tannenbaum, the fourth Israeli to turn up in Hizbollah's hands in nine days. Mr Nasrallah did not even mention his name. But he told a story of intrigue and espionage worthy of a John Le Carré novel.

The plot thickens. "We did not kidnap anyone in Switzerland," Sayed Hassan Nasrallah told us with a grim smile. "The Mossad spy was entrapped here in Beirut." There were no documents for journalists to see, no photocopy of the allegedly false passport used by Elhanan Tannenbaum, the fourth Israeli to turn up in Hizbollah's hands in nine days. Mr Nasrallah did not even mention his name. But he told a story of intrigue and espionage worthy of a John Le Carré novel.

He even spoke in the language of conspiracy. "It all began a while ago," he said, "when a foreign organisation under intelligence cover in Switzerland wanted to get in touch with a Hizbollah cadre who was connected to a key figure in the [Hizbollah] party." The "foreign organisation", it turned out, was the gaffe-prone Israeli intelligence service, Mossad. The man was Mr Tannenbaum. The "Hizbollah cadre" remained anonymous, just like the mysterious "key figure" in the party. Perhaps it was Mr Nasrallah himself.

In any event, according to the Hizbollah chairman, his men passed on "harmless but important information" to Mr Tannenbaum - described by Israel as a businessman who just happens to be a colonel in the Israeli army reserves. Hizbollah repeated the gift of information until Mr Tannenbaum - this, at least, was Mr Nasrallah's story - asked to cut out his intermediary and make direct contact with someone in Beirut.

"He was lured here," the Hizbollah chairman said. "He flew to Beirut from Brussels on a false passport and entered Lebanon legally. We arrested him when he arrived. We also had additional information that this man was an Israeli officer commanding an artillery unit in Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 and bombed Beirut."

It was all said with confidence, Mr Nasrallah sittingin a conference hall attachedto one of Beirut's biggest mosques. A Hizbollah banner and the Lebanese flag stood behind him. There was orange juice and water for journalists. It was, to the say the least, eerie.

Not least because Mr Tannenbaum's case - he has a home in Lausanne - recalls an equally intriguing episode in Switzerland three months ago when an Israeli Mossad agent using the false name of IssacBentel was deported to Israel after Swiss police caught him using a wire tap on the phone of a Lebanese in Berne who was believed to have contacts with Hizbollah. Abdallah el-Zein, it turned out, had changed phone numbers three months earlier. The Mossad agent was deported for "illegal acts", political espionage and using false documents.

On Sunday, Mr Nasrallah made his first announcement of Mr Tannenbaum's "capture" and then turned to the Lebanese Prime Minister, Selim Hoss, who was sitting in the audience. "Excuse me, Mr Prime Minister," he said. "But now you're going to have to take some phone calls from Mrs [Madeleine] Albright [the US Secretary of State]."