Just nu pågår rättegången mot Hossam Taleb Yaacoub. Den ger unik inblick i hur Hizbollah fungerar och illustrerar tydligt hur Iran arbetar. Rättegången visar vidare varför stater som Sverige inte ska dela ut pass som samlarbilder i cornflakespaketen. Intressanta frågeställningar, kan tyckas.
Svensk press är dock helt frånvarande. Istället är det amerikanska medier som sätter den svenska terrorismen i perspektiv. Häromdagen var det New York Times som rapporterade bäst, idag är det Washington Post:
"The Israeli tourists on Arkia Airlines Flight 161 from Tel Aviv could not have known it, but their arrival in Cyprus July 6 was watched closely. A pair of trained eyes counted each passenger as the group exited the plane and boarded a shuttle, headed for resorts that had also been carefully studied and mapped.
The bearded foreigner who silently tracked the Israelis had done his work well. He knew where the visitors would sleep, shop and eat. He knew how many security guards patrolled their hotel parking lots and how long it would take police to arrive from the station down the street.
But the watcher was being watched. When Cypriot police picked him up, the Hezbollah operative quickly acknowledged what he was doing, although he claimed not to know why.
'I was just collecting information about the Jews,' he told police, according to a sworn deposition.
[...]
Testimony and court documents in Cyprus also show that Hezbollah is expanding its network in Europe, recruiting European operatives, conducting surveillance and moving packages to various European cities in preparation for possible future attacks, Levitt and other analysts said.
In statements to police, Yaakoub spoke of 'previous missions' that took him from Turkey into the heart of Western Europe. At one point, he said, he carried a mysterious package wrapped in newspaper.
[...]
Beginning in 2009, Yaakoub made numerous trips to Cyprus, a popular tourist destination and financial center in the eastern Mediterranean and a member of the European Union since 2004. Yaakoub told acquaintances that he was trying to establish a juice-importing business. But the dark-haired 24-year-old attracted suspicion because of his apparent fascination with the habits of Jewish visitors to the sun-drenched island.
For more than a week last summer, he crisscrossed the island, asking questions and staking out hotels and businesses catering to Jewish customers. He scoured the island for restaurants that served kosher meals.
'I was supposed to spot Israeli restaurants where Jews eat kosher,' he would explain later to investigators. "Det ska tilläggas att Sverige har två ytterst välrenommerade experter på Hizbollah som hugade journalister skulle kunna använda sig av om det funnes intresse för svenska medborgare som åker till Libanon för att skaffa sig vapenträning och sedan bli internationella agenter för terroriströrelser. Magnus Ranstorp har exempelvis skrivit artikeln "The Hizballah Training Camps in Lebanon", och så sent som igår skrev Magnus Norell tillsammans med Matthew Levitt på The Daily Beast: "Hezbollah Worried; Europe Should be Too".
Men det är väl bekvämare att sitta och twittra.