Arab League to review terrorism accusations against Lebanese group

Nov 13, 2008, 10:27 GMT

Beirut - The Arab League has agreed to review the circumstances surrounding a series of purported confessions of terrorist attacks that were aired by Syrian state television last week.

The request for the review came from Saad Hariri, head of Lebanon's Future Current Movement party and majority leader in the Lebanese parliament. Hariri has disputed claims in the broadcast confessions that linked his party to recent terror attacks in Syria and to the militant, Lebanon-based, al-Qaeda-linked Fatah al-Islam organization.

Syrian television last week aired the confessions of 17 people claiming responsibility for a September 27 car bombing in southern Damascus. Some analysts have questioned the reliability of those confessions.

One of those who appeared identified herself as Wafaa Abssi, daughter of Fatah al-Islam leader Shakr al-Abssi. She claimed that Hariri's movement used to finance the group.

Hariri called Arab League chief Amr Mussa asking him to form a 'fact-finding Arab committee to investigate the testimonies,' a statement from his office said.

'We are expecting the delegation to come in the coming two weeks,' a source close to Hariri's parliamentary bloc told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa.

Assigning an Arab League fact-finding commission to look into Fatah al-Islam crimes would 'block attempts by the Syrian regime to blame Lebanon for spreading terror, which is a game that only the Syrian regime excels in,' said the statement from Hariri's office.

The statement accused Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime of 'trying desperately to stretch its hands to control Lebanon's national sovereignty. We are confident that it would fail.'

The Future Current movement had denied the 'allegations and lies,' broadcast by Syrian television, saying they 'confirm the established relation between Syrian intelligence and Fatah al-Islam.'

The source added that the international commission probing the 2005 assassination of ex-Premier Rafik Hariri, father of Saad, would be asked to look into the Syrian broadcast.

The Lebanese army was engaged in a 4-month battle in 2007 with Fatah al-Islam fighters holed up in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in North Lebanon.

The camp was completely destroyed by the Lebanese Army, and in the process some 400 people were killed, including around 170 Lebanese army soldiers and more than 230 Fatah al-Islam fighters.

A few members of the Fatah al-Islam group managed to flee the camp, including Shakr al-Abssi.

Fatah al-Islam emerged in November 2006 when it split from Fatah al-Intifada (Fatah Uprising), a Syrian-backed Palestinian group based in Lebanon, which itself was a splinter of Yasser Arafat's mainstream organization Fatah.

Some officials in Lebanon dispute that it was a real split and alleged that Fatah al-Islam is a part of Syrian intelligence security forces. Syria denies any link to Fatah al-Islam.