Hezbollah vowed to secure the release of a terrorist imprisoned in Israel. “The day of Samir Kuntar’s release is very close,” Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Lebanese militia, said Monday at a rally marking 28 years since Kuntar’s capture after he attacked a town in northern Israel. Kuntar, a Lebanese Druse, was not included in a 2004 prisoner swap in which Israel freed hundreds of Arab terrorists in exchange for an Israeli businessman kidnapped by Hezbollah and the bodies of three soldiers killed in a border clash. Israeli officials hinted that Kuntar could be released in exchange for word from Hezbollah on the whereabouts of Ron Arad, an Israeli airman missing since he bailed out over Lebanon in 1986. With uncertainty remaining about whether Arad is even alive, Hezbollah has not yet delivered on its side of the German-mediated deal.
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