BEIRUT: Two Lebanese men were arrested Tuesday on suspicion of smuggling arms to the Syrian opposition through illegal border crossings in the Bekaa, including the town of Arsal.

Military Judge Imad al-Zein questioned the two men, who were identified by their first names as Wael and Bahaa, and subsequently issued arrest warrants against them for arms trading and smuggling, a judicial source told The Daily Star. The source said the detainees would be referred to the Military Tribunal for trial.

Syria has repeatedly urged Lebanese authorities to curb arms smuggling through the porous border between the two countries.

Arsal was in the media spotlight after Defense Minister Fayez Ghosn said in December that members of Al-Qaeda had infiltrated the town and were posing as Syrian opposition activists.

The March 14 coalition said Ghosn’s remarks were baseless and aimed at serving the Syrian regime, which accuses extremist gangs of standing behind the ongoing unrest.

Separately, German police Tuesday arrested two men, including one Lebanese, on allegations that they were spying on Syrian opposition groups in Germany.

Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said he summoned the Syrian ambassador to tell him that Germany would not tolerate such activities “against Syrian opposition figures.”

Some 70 police officers searched the suspects’ apartments and those of six alleged accomplices who are also under investigation, the Federal Prosecutors’ Office said.

The Syrian, identified only as 34-year-old Mahmoud El A. and German-Lebanese Akram O. are suspected of “having spied over several years on Syrian opposition figures in Germany,” according to prosecutors.

The arrests and searches are the result of an “extensive” investigation by Germany’s domestic intelligence service.

No further details were given and the investigation is ongoing. Westerwelle declined to elaborate.

A judicial source told The Daily Star that Lebanon had received no official information about the matter.

Meanwhile, the Future parliamentary bloc of former Prime Minister Saad Hariri expressed surprise over what it described as the government’s failure to fulfill people’s demands “to deploy the army on the northern and eastern borders with sisterly Syria.”

In a statement issued after its weekly meeting headed by former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, the bloc said that people are demanding that the army be deployed “to control borders and protect Lebanese villages and to protect our brothers, the Syrian refugees ... particularly after repeated violations of Lebanese sovereignty by the Syrian regime, which led to the martyrdom of innocent Lebanese who were not protected.”

Touching on recent reports of raids carried out by the Lebanese Army on the northern border, the statement said they “seem to be targeting [border] villages rather than protecting them.”

The group also condemned “massacres that were and are being committed by the Syrian regime against innocent people in their homes in villages and cities across Syria.”

Sources said that the Lebanese Army beefed up its presence along the northern Lebanese-Syrian border over the weekend and is carrying out raids against armed groups rumored to belong to the Free Syrian Army, which is fighting Syrian troops.

Also, the Central Security Council convened Tuesday in a regular meeting at the Interior Ministry and undertook a series of security measures which remain confidential.