IS RON ARAD DEAD?

Former German intelligence chief: Ron Arad is dead
Downed Israeli Air Force Navigator Ron Arad is dead, former German intelligence chief Bernd Schmidbauer flatly told German Television in an interview set to broadcast Monday night. In his capacity as coordinator of the German Intelligence Services in the mid-to-late 1990s, Schmidbauer played a key role in negotiations for hostage deals between Israel and Hizbullah, shuttling between Berlin, Beirut, Tehran and Jerusalem.

Israel poured tens millions of dollars, kidnapped dozens of Lebanese fighters and cut several lopsided deals in a fruitless 18-year quest to locate and repatriate Arad. Citing lack of evidence, Israel refuses to list Arad – who parachuted from a plane and into the hands of Lebanese militiamen in 1986 – as dead.

"The only question remains whether he died from a disease, from an injury related to his crash or was killed. But that he is dead, is clear," Schmidbauer told Germany's WDR Television in a documentary about the horse-trading of prisoners and hostages between Hizbullah and Israel over the past two decades. ...

In response to the German claims, Asi Shariv, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said, "I would refer you to the Winograd report, which contradicts the German statements." The Winograd report, released to Arad's family in September 2003, came to the assessment, "based on all the available evidence," that the possibility that Arad is still alive overrides the possibility that he is dead. ...

German intelligence documents obtained by the "An Eye for an Eye" filmmaker Hubert Seipel reveal that the BND believed Arad to be dead as early as 1996. Secret documents compiled in 1997 show that German agents under the command of BND director August Henning discovered that Arad had been held in Lebanon until April 1996.

Militiamen, likely affiliated with Iran's Revolutionary Guards, hid Arad in a cave near the village of Nabi Sh'it. In October 1996 he was transferred to the Iranian Embassy in Beirut. From there, Revolutionary Guards officers shipped Arad through Syria to Iran, according to the document. In Iran, the Arad trail faded entirely in the bowels of the country's complex of prisons and detention centers, according to the documents.