BEIRUT (AFP)
DNA tests on the body of a man suspected of being the wanted leader of Sunni extremist group Fatah al-Islam have proved negative, Lebanon's attorney general said on Monday.
Said Mirza said Shaker al-Abssi could have escaped during a final assault by the Lebanese army last week against the Islamist militia, ending a deadly 15-week standoff in a Palestinian refugee camp.
In a statement carried by state news agency NNA, Mirza said a Yemeni aide of Abssi had confessed to escaping from the besieged Nahr al-Bared camp in north Lebanon together with three other fighters.
Nasser Shiba told interrogators that Abssi was "in good health and armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle and an explosives belt, ammunition and grenades" at the time of their escape, the attorney general said.
They had fled the camp on the night of September 1-2, after which Shiba said he had lost track of his colleagues and taken refuge in an abandoned house before his arrest.
Mirza said the suspect was arrested on Saturday in El-Minieh, near the bombed-out Palestinian refugee camp.
The statement added that DNA tests on the body of a man identified by his wife as being Abssi showed that it was not in fact the Palestinian fighter.
The tests were carried out on Abssi's wife and five of her children, as well as a brother of Abssi in Jordan, proving the body in the morgue could not that of the Fatah al-Islam chief.
A military source said on September 10 that the wife had identified Abssi among the bodies of militants killed in fighting with the army, which seized control of Nahr al-Bared on September 2 after 15 weeks of deadly clashes.
She identified him at the morgue of the state-run hospital in the nearby city of Tripoli, the source told AFP.
The brother, Abdul Razzaq al-Abssi, had said at the time that Shaker had died a "martyr" as we his wish and asked for the body to be flown to Jordan for burial.
"The Jordanian authorities have taken blood samples from me and sent them to Lebanon. Maybe Shaker's wife got confused," the brother, an orthopedic surgeon in Amman, told AFP on Monday.
Troops have launched intensive search operations around the seafront camp of Nahr al-Bared since the battle ended with a desperate breakout attempt in which dozens of militants and soldiers were killed. |
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Abssi background Abssi is a veteran of wars against the West ranging from Africa to Latin America.
His background includes a sting as a former MiG fighter pilot who flew sorties for Libya against French-backed troops in Chad before training airmen for the anti-U.S. Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
In addition to being hunted by Lebanese troops, Abssi is wanted by both Syria and Jordan for radical activities, including the 2002 assassination of a U.S. diplomat in Amman.
Syrian authorities threw him in prison in 2002 for three years for belonging to a banned Islamist group and for plotting attacks. |
