The ”chosen one”: Hezbollah recruit Hossam Taleb Yaacoub (in the striped top) is escorted by police to his court hearing in Cyprus. Photo: AP

Vienna: For days after his arrest by Cypriot police, Hossam Taleb Yaacoub kept to the cover story he had spent years building: he was a Lebanese businessman looking for import opportunities, not an operative for the Shiite militant group Hezbollah scouting potential targets for terrorism.

Under sustained interrogation, his story began to wobble. He admitted he had checked the arrival time for a flight from Israel but only because a fellow merchant had asked him to do so, paying him $US500 ($488) up front and promising $US500 more when he got back to Beirut.

Finally, early on July 14, nearly a week after he was arrested, Mr Yaacoub, 24, admitted he was in Cyprus working for Hezbollah. The group had recruited him in 2007, when a man named Reda called him to a meeting at the Hezbollah bureau in Beirut that dealt with student affairs.

”He told me that he needed me for the secret mission of Hezbollah,” Mr Yaacoub told Cypriot investigators, according to depositions in the case. ”I accepted because I considered that he needed me for something great, and I was for them the chosen one.”

Mr Yaacoub’s trial, on charges he participated in a Hezbollah plot to strike at Israeli tourists in Cyprus, ended on Thursday with written summations and the prosecution and defence sparring over contradictions between his testimony and statements he made in police depositions, some elements of which he now denies.

Those depositions describe the trajectory of an immigrant boy raised in a quiet Swedish town north-east of Gothenburg who grew into a man with a life out of a suspense thriller, including secret courses in weapons training and trips financed by the Shiite militant organisation.

His fate may have broad repercussions for Hezbollah. The combination of the bombing in Bulgaria that killed five Israelis and their bus driver less than two weeks after Mr Yaacoub was arrested and for which Hezbollah has been blamed and Mr Yaacoub’s trial in Cyprus have increased pressure on the European Union to list the group as a terrorist organisation.

Terrorism experts watching the trial say Hezbollah is showing growing proficiency and using great caution and care in planning its attacks.

”They send this guy to Cyprus after all the training, all the courier stuff, which I think is part of the training as well as missions,” said Matthew Levitt from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel think tank. ”People recognise you – very slow, methodical. This is old school.”

Mr Yaacoub was most likely chosen for covert operations because of his European upbringing and Swedish passport, an asset for anyone hoping to travel unobserved around Europe. Mr Yaacoub’s father sold flower pots in the town square in Lidkoping. Neighbours recalled a quiet family that did not socialise much. Mr Yaacoub learnt fluent Swedish and proficient English as well as Arabic.

Mr Yaacoub told investigators that his first handler, a man named Wahid, told him he was to operate in complete secrecy.

”He always pointed out that nobody should know anything, neither my family nor my friends,” he said. In Beirut basements, he was taught to perform surveillance and to work undercover.

He was trained, he said, in how to handle his personal life in an inconspicuous manner that would not raise suspicions. That part of his training he called ”theoretical”. The practical part of his training involved both military courses in handling weapons and trips abroad.

On his first mission, a delivery in the Turkish city of Antalya, Mr Yaacoub waited outside a department store wearing a hat so the man making the pick-up would recognise him. They exchanged code words and Mr Yaacoub handed over a bag containing the envelope he was supposed to deliver.

”I don’t know what its contents were, and I had no entitlement to ask, because everything is done in complete secrecy within the organisation,” Mr Yaacoub was quoted in one deposition.

Last month, Mr Yaacoub admitted in court he had worked for the militant group, receiving $US600 a month. But he denied components of the story that appears in his depositions, such as the claim that Hezbollah had trained him to defeat polygraph testing. He says he was at times confused and intimidated while being interrogated and that other statements may have been added by investigators and he signed them without reading.

The first story Mr Yaacoub told investigators had been methodically prepared to deflect suspicion while he gathered intelligence in Cyprus. He first travelled there in 2009 ”to create a cover story for people to get to know me”, Mr Yaacoub said, according to the depositions, ”to keep coming with a justifiable purpose and without giving rise to suspicions”. He spent one week in Ayia Napa on holiday, all expenses paid by Hezbollah, performing no business besides building up his cover story.

His work began in earnest on his second trip, in December 2011, when he began collecting information on hotels, internet cafes and parking lots. ”The organisation uses large car parks to pick up and deliver cars and packages,” he said. ”I learned about this during my training.” After every mission he would sit down for a formal debriefing with another Hezbollah official, one who was not his handler, about his movements, ”where I went and what I did”.

”Although I believe in the armed struggle for the liberation of Lebanon from Israel, I am not in favour of terrorist attacks against innocent people,” Mr Yaacoub said. ”For me, war and terrorism are two different things.”