Official: Spy Was in Lebanon to Help Kidnapped Czech

The Czech defense minister said Friday that a military spy who was among five Czechs returned from Lebanon was seeking information about a fellow countryman kidnapped in Libya last year.

The minister, Martin Stropnicky, was quoted in the Hospodarske Noviny daily as saying the military agent, Martin Psik, went to Lebanon in an effort "to help our cook in Libya."

It was the first official comment on Psik's role in the group which also included a lawyer, an interpreter and two journalists.

They all returned home Thursday, the same day the Czech government refused to extradite a Lebanese man, Ali Taan Fayad, to the U.S. to face weapons charges.

Stropnicky had said the refusal to extradite was a condition for releasing the Czechs, but later said that was simplification of complex case.

The U.S. embassy in Prague on Thursday blasted the decision by the Czech Republic's justice minister not to extradite Fayad to the U.S.

Prague's Municipal Court allowed the extradition of Fayad, also known as Ali Amin, and two citizens of Ivory Coast last year but Justice Minister Robert Pelikan has the final say and on Thursday refused to extradite them.

The three were arrested in Prague 2014 while allegedly trying to sell weapons to undercover U.S. law enforcement agents who pretended to be from a Colombian terrorist group.

"We are dismayed by the Czech government decision to release Ali Fayad and Khaled El Merebi," the embassy said in a statement.

Court spokeswoman Marketa Puci said Fayad and Ivoirian El Merebi were released from detention following the minister's decision. The minister still has to decide on the other Ivoirian.

"These men were indicted in the United States federal court for conspiring to kill officers and employees of the United States," the embassy said, adding the move harms the relations of the two allies.

"There's no justification for the release of these dangerous individuals, which deals a blow to the cooperative relationship of our two countries' law enforcement agencies," the statement said.