General Security officer, two civilians charged with terror plans
Chief Military Investigating Magistrate Rasheed Mezher has issued arrest warrants against an officer in the General Security and two civilians, the state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported on Friday. "Judge Mezher ordered the arrest of General Security officer Mohammad Amer and of Rifaat al-Qadiri and Mustafa Bakkour after having questioned them," the NNA report added.
The three were accused by the military judge of possessing explosives with the intent to commit terrorist acts.
"The three men were caught in possession of vials containing unknown substances which have been sent to a laboratory to determine their contents," a judicial official told AFP on condition of anonymity, and added: "The military judge has accused them of possession of illegal substances and has ordered their detention."
The three were arrested in the Kfar Shuba region in Southern Lebanon, local press reported, though the date of their arrests was not specified.
"The accused are not linked to the attacks that recently took place in Tripoli," the official said referring to two bus bombings targeting Lebanese troops and killing over two dozen people.
On Sunday, Lebanese authorities announced the arrest of a "terrorist network" thought to be behind three deadly attacks against the army since May.
The cell is thought to be linked to the Al-Qaeda inspired Fatah al-Islam militia which fought a deadly 15-week battle with the army in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in Northern Lebanon last year, a security official said.
Also Friday, As-Safir newspaper reported that the alleged leader of the terrorist ring Abdel-Ghani Jawhar, who remains at large, was seen in the Northern region of Akkar two days ago.
It said Lebanese security services were trying to "tighten the cordon on him."
The newspaper said one of the arrested suspects in the Tripoli terror ring has "told military intelligence investigators Jawhar made more than one contact last month with a Syrian mobile phone and managed to cross the border heading to the Syrian city of Homs, and from there to Damascus," three days before the September 27 blast south of the Syrian capital of Damascus which killed 17 people and wounded 14.
"Jawhar returned to North Lebanon a few hours after the Damascus blast," the As-Safir report added.
"The reported developments led to upgrading the Lebanese-Syrian security coordination, especially regarding the [phone] numbers that had been registered and forwarded to the Syrian side," the report said.
Also on Friday As-Safir reported that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said the leader of a terrorist cell involved in the recent Damascus blast was "a Syrian national who has been arrested and charged."
The newspaper quoted Assad as saying that figures from Lebanon”s March 14 Forces "had financed some of these terrorist groups [in Lebanon and Syria]."
As-Safir said Assad also informed "Arab figures" who met him recently that the Syrian authorities had arrested the daughter of Fatah al-Islam leader Shaker al-Abssi who testified to investigators about "what had been planned to target Syria."
"Syria is threatened," As-Safir quoted Assad as saying, adding that "some radical fundamental groups in North Lebanon are trying to use Syria as a pass between Lebanon and Iraq and started recently changing Syria into a theater to act. Some of these groups have been monitored in Syria and we are pursuing them."