16 November 2007
BEIRUT: Lebanese security forces uncovered a plot to assassination Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, according to a report in the local daily As-Safir. The plot was uncovered during the course of ongoing investigations into a terror cell arrested over the summer in the Sunni-dominated Iqlim al-Kharroub area, the daily said.
The paper said a raid on the home of a Libyan suspect arrested over the summer in Iqlim al-Kharroub uncovered large quantities of cyanide, a chemical that when mixed with ammonia produces a crude explosive. The Libyan suspect hid around 100 kilograms of cyanide in a rural area in Iqlim al-Kharroub, 30 kilograms of which had been shipped to Iraq, the paper said. Security forces confiscated only 70 kilograms of the chemical.
As-Safir also said the chemical, a powerful poison, is strictly controlled, especially its sale and importation into the country. The poison does not have to be ingested orally to kill; contact with the skin by touching a surface covered with the powder is enough to kill.
A security source told The Daily Star on Wednesday that it was highly unlikely that Sunni fundamentalist terror cells could have gotten access to Nasrallah at any time or known of his movements, which are highly secretive, in order to poison him. Poisoning would require intimate and close contact with the subject.
"The suspects, whether those arrested in Iqlim al-Kharroub or Fatah al-Islam terrorists from Nahr al-Bared, are all trained to lie and mislead investigators to the point of repeating the same sentences which they appear to have memorized verbatim," the source said, adding that much of the information in the As-Safir article is a fabrication.
As-Safir revealed that interrogations of terrorist suspects affiliated with Al-Qaeda, uncovered another plot to target UNIFIL forces in the South. The proposed attack, As-Safir said, was intended to sour relations between international peacekeepers and Hizbullah in areas South of the Litani river.
The paper said the detained terror suspects also admitted to firing Katyushas toward northern Israel in the 2004-07 period. The paper said the supposed Al-Qaeda terror network was divided into three groups, one based in Iqlim al-Kharroub, a second in Sidon and a third based in Qassimieh near Tyre.
The security source said that no link has been established between what the Lebanese judiciary refers to as "Al-Qaeda-style Sunni fundamentalist terrorists," and the real Al-Qaeda. "These are Sunni, fundamentalist groups that carried out attacks in the style of Al-Qaeda," the security source said, "but they are most likely sleeper cells left behind by the Syrians like time bombs."
He said the terror cells are most likely affiliated to pro-Syrian organizations in the South, like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC). "The groups under investigation were arrested in areas that [Nasrallah] never goes to, and since the end of the [summer 2006] war Nasrallah has been in hiding," the security sources added.
As-Safir said the US Embassy in Beirut had asked to be kept abreast of the results of the probes, in order to determine how such a large quantity of cyanide arrived in Lebanon and how almost a third of the quantity was sent to Iraq to be used most likely against US troops.
Muslim scholar Sheikh Omar Bakri, stressed that there is no Al-Qaeda in Lebanon. "If there were Al-Qaeda in Lebanon the whole country, God forbid, would have been in flames as Al-Qaeda believes in the doctrine of chaos," Bakri told The Daily Star. "Not one Sunni in Lebanon answered repeated calls to arms by [Al-Qaeda number two Ayman] al-Zawahiri, as most Sunnis in Lebanon are with the government and are supported by Saudi Arabia."
