A recent Mossad operation to find information about the fate of long-missing IAF Lt. Col. Ron Arad included tests on DNA samples taken from a grave, the Saudi news outlet Al Arabiya reported Tuesday on the heels of previous Arab reports that Israeli intelligence officers questioned an Iranian general on the matter.
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According to the report, special teams took samples from a grave in southern Lebanon after "relatively" reliable information indicated that the navigator might be buried there.
The DNA findings, if there were any, were unreported.
Earlier, the London-based Rai al-Youm claimed that Mossad agents abducted the Iranian officer on Syrian soil, transported him to an unnamed African country for interrogation, and eventually released him.
The report further claimed that the Iranians monitored the situation closely.
Arad, an Israeli Air Force navigator, bailed out of a warplane that went down over Lebanon in 1986. Initially taken prisoner by Lebanese terrorist group Amal, and later handed over to Hezbollah, which is believed to have transferred him to its patron, Iran.
The last proof of life from Arad was received in 1988. In 2006, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah publicly stated that the terrorist group believed Arad to be dead and his remains lost. In October 2016, news reports revealed that a joint investigation carried out by Mossad and IDF Military Intelligence, based on new information received over the previous two years, concluded that Arad had most likely died in late 1988.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett revealed that the Mossad carried out a mission seeking to uncover information about Arab during a Knesset speech Monday.
While Bennett, who came under immediate criticism for disclosing that such an operation took place, branded the operation a success, some security officials admitted that while the operation was wide-ranging and daring, it had failed to derive new information on Arad's fate.
Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Yesh Atid MK Ram Ben Barak, a former Mossad deputy director, criticized the publication of information on the operation in an interview with Channel 12 News.
However, a senior security official on Monday said the operation "was one of the most important and successful" in Israel's history and that "quality information was obtained."
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