February 18,2010 - Daily Star Lebanon Judge charges 11 Al Qaeda suspects with spying.doc

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Thursday, February 18, 2010
Judge charges 11 Al-Qaeda suspects with spying


By Agence France Presse (AFP)

BEIRUT: A Lebanese military judge on Wednesday charged 11 suspected members of an Al-Qaeda-inspired group with forming an armed gang and spying on the army and UN peacekeepers, a judicial source said.
“Judge Samih al-Hajj charged 11 suspected members of Fatah al-Islam with forming an armed gang, spying on the army and UNIFIL troops (in southern Lebanon), and forging ID papers,” the source said, requesting anonymity.
If convicted, they could face the death penalty.
Among those charged – several of them in absentia – are Abdel-Rahman Awad and Abdel-Ghani Jawhar, two Fatah al-Islam members accused of a deadly 2008 bus bombing in the northern city of Tripoli.
Fatah al-Islam, an obscure Al-Qaeda-inspired group, fought deadly battles against the Lebanese army in the summer of 2007 in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared near Tripoli.
The fighting killed 400 people, including 168 soldiers, and displaced some 30,000 refugees from the camp, which was leveled in the fighting won by the Lebanese army.
Six peacekeepers of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) were killed by a bombing in south Lebanon in June 2007, while the Nahr al-Bared clashes raged.
Lebanese officials at the time pointed a finger of blame at Fatah al-Islam.
There have been widespread fears since the 2007 Nahr al-Bared battle that the group has switched its base to the highly volatile Palestinian camp of Ain al-Hilweh in southern Lebanon.
Lebanese officials suspect that Awad, who is dubbed the “prince of Fatah al-Islam,” is holed up in Ain al-Hilweh, the largest of Lebanon’s 12 Palestinian camps.
By longstanding convention, the Lebanese army does not enter the camps, leaving security inside to Palestinian factions. – AFP


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