Azerbaijan court confirms two Lebanese on trial for terror plot
Suspects “connected to Hizbullah And Al-Qaeda”
Two Lebanese and four Azerbaijanis have gone on trial on terrorism charges in Baku for planning an attack on the Israeli Embassy in Azerbaijan”s capital, an official said Monday.
The trial, which began on May 27, is being held behind closed doors and has been adjourned until June 10, a spokesman for Azerbaijan”s serious crimes court told AFP on condition of anonymity.
"According to the indictment, the citizens of Lebanon … arrived in Azerbaijan under orders to commit acts of terrorism," the spokesman said.
He said they were "connected to" the Lebanese Shiite resistance group Hizbullah and the Sunni Al-Qaeda network.
The two Lebanese were under orders to recruit Azerbaijani citizens and devise a plan to attack the Israeli and US embassies, as well as the strategic Gabala missile-detection radar station in the north of the country, he said.
He added that the suspects were also believed to have connections with Iran”s powerful ideological army the Revolutionary Guards.
"They arrived in Azerbaijan through Iran and were assisted in crossing the border by the Sepah," he said, using the Persian name for the Revolutionary Guards.
The two Lebanese men are identified in the indictment as Ali Karaki and Ali Najmeddin.
The court spokesman said members of the group had visited areas around the Israeli Embassy and the radar station in preparation for the attack.
He said two of the Azerbaijani suspects were initially detained and revealed information that led to the arrests of the rest of the group.
The Los Angeles Times over the weekend quoted Israeli and Western officials as saying the planned attack was part of broader efforts by Hizbullah and Iran to target Israeli facilities abroad.
Sources told the newspaper that the men had been arrested in May 2008 and had earlier in the year travelled back and forth between Baku to Iran as well as to Lebanon.
It reported that the group had planned to set off three or four car bombs simultaneously around the Israeli Embassy, which is in a business tower that houses other embassies and the offices of top foreign companies.
It said that a number of other suspects – including Lebanese, Iranian and Azerbaijani nationals – escaped to Iran when police moved in to arrest the group.
The newspaper quoted Western anti-terror officials as saying the attack was a planned retaliation by Hizbullah for the killing of one of its top commanders, Imad Mughniyeh, who died in a February 2008 car bombing in Damascus which the militant group blamed on Israel.
Azerbaijan, a mainly Muslim country of 8.7 million on the Caspian Sea, has warned of a rising threat from Islamic fundamentalists, though critics allege the country also uses the potential threat of extremism as a cover for persecuting political opponents.
In late 2007 authorities said they had foiled a planned attack by a radical Islamic group against government facilities and diplomatic missions, including the US Embassy.
Fifteen people were also convicted and imprisoned that year for plotting a coup with the alleged backing of Iranian intelligence services.
Azerbaijan has accused Iran of trying to export its brand of political Islam to the Shiite Muslim country.