A suspected Lebanese collaborator with Israel who went missing 17 days ago was found dead Wednesday in an olive grove on the edge of Kfar Kila village in the south, reported the Daily Star newspaper on Thursday.
A source at the Nabatieh government hospital said that Hassan Daher, 65, was “probably not killed by abductors but died from natural causes about a week ago.”
Daher went missing in late April and was thought to have been kidnapped as part of an escalating campaign against former South Lebanon Army (SLA) militiamen and other residents of the south suspected of having collaborated with Israel.
There was no claim of responsibility for Daher’s disappearance, said the paper.
His body was discovered by farmers from Qlaya.
Alerted by the smell, the farmers discovered the partially decomposed corpse lying on some rocks in the middle of the grove.
The authorities were alerted and Daher’s body was removed and taken to the Nabatieh government hospital for an autopsy.
Kfar Kila residents told the paper that he had been involved in a dispute with another branch of the Daher family in the mid-1980s. The details were unclear, but the residents believed the feud had involved the killing of two people, one of them Daher’s daughter, and the rape of his niece.
The result was that Daher fled and sought refuge in then-occupied Kfar Kila, they added.
He found a job in Israel and allegedly smuggled drugs across the border, the paper added.
His two sons, both former SLA militiamen, are in Roumieh Prison.
Since the beginning of the year, the border district has witnessed a growing number of attacks against ex-SLA militiamen – Albawaba.com
