Five Lebanese militants freed from prisons in Israel, Wednesday, in exchange for the bodies of two captured Israeli soldiers. Israel released Samir Kantar and four others after Hezbollah handed over two black coffins with the bodies of the Israeli soldiers, closing a chapter from the 2006 war in Lebanon. Kantar, who had been serving multiple life terms in Israel for a 1979 attack, wiped away tears as he stood before a crowd in the coastal border town of Naqoura. The five later flew to Beirut, where they received an official welcome from the president and were congratulated by Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, who was last seen in public in January. “Your return is a new victory and the future with you will only be a shinning march in which we achieve the sovereignty of our land and the freedom of people,” President Michel Suleiman said in his address. “I congratulate the resistance (Hezbollah) for this new achievement.” Winning freedom for Kantar was one of the reasons Hezbollah's leader cited at the time for going to war with Israel in 2006. The swap – mediated by a UN-appointed German official who shuttled between the sides for 18 months – is likely to provide a significant boost to Hezbollah. Israel held on to Kantar for decades, hoping to use him as a bargaining chip to win new information about an Israeli airman whose plane crashed in Lebanon in 1986. But despite dissatisfaction over Hezbollah's report on the airman, provided over the weekend, and under pressure from the captured soldiers' families to bring them home, Israel's Cabinet voted on Tuesday to release Kantar. Hezbollah's commander in south Lebanon, Sheikh Nabil Kaouk, called the swap an “official admission of defeat” for Israel.
