Prime Minister's Office: Arad is alive until proven otherwise

        The Prime Minister's Office on Sunday responded to media reports on the alleged death of missing IDF airman Ron Arad in the mid 1990s, saying that Israel's underlying presumption is that he is still alive. Until proven otherwise we will consider him to be alive, and "we are working to return him home," the PMO said in a statement. The statement came in response to a Yediot Aharonot article citing a classified report compiled by the IDF Intelligence Corps on the fate of Arad, which claims the IAF navigator was still alive in 1995 and died in Lebanon in the mid-1990s. The secret document claims that "IAF navigator Ron Arad was alive for at least nine years after he was taken hostage, and died in captivity in Lebanon." According to the report, Lt.-Col. Arad, who went missing after his plane was downed over Lebanon in 1986, was transferred to Iran, where he was held in a secret Revolutionary Guard facility in Teheran for several years. In 1994, the IDF kidnapped Hizbullah commander Mustafa Dirani, one of the men who had held Arad captive in Lebanon. The Iranians, fearing that Dirani would reveal their involvement in the affair, transferred Arad back to Lebanon, where he reportedly died of an illness in the mid 1990s. Arad's family said in response to the report that as far as they are concerned Ron is still alive, adding that the Arad family deserves to know what happened to the missing navigator. "Even if the article is accurate and Ron is not alive, we are committed to bringing him home," Arad family lawyer Eliad Shraga said. In 2004, Israel released Dirani and Hizbullah commander Abdul Karim Obeid in exchange for Elhanan Tannenbaum, and the bodies of IDF soldiers Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Sawayid. (15,07)