Lebanon requests death penalty for 11 al-Qaida members
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A Lebanese military judge on Wednesday requested the death penalty for 11 suspected al-Qaida militants charged of planning attacks and monitoring Lebanese soldiers and UN Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) troops, the country's state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported.
The report said Lebanese military investigation Judge Samih El Hajj solicited death penalty for 11 suspected al-Qaida members, among whom six are already arrested.
The members had previously formed an armed group that aims at harming Lebanon, committing infractions towards citizens, undermining state authority, and spying on the military and U.N. peacekeepers, and forging passports, added the report.
Among the accused is Abdel Rahman Awad, a fugitive leader of Fatah al-Islam, the al-Qaida-inspired group that was engaged in a fierce battle with the Lebanese Army in 2007 at the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared in north Lebanon.
Another fugitive Abdel Ghani Jawhar, was accused of carrying out a bomb attack that killed 15 people in 2008 in northern Lebanese city Tripoli.
Local An Nahar daily reported last December that al-Qaida militants were plotting terrorist attacks against state institutions and foreign missions in Lebanon.
The newspaper quoted a well-informed security source as saying that Lebanese security agencies have received information about the infiltration of al-Qaida militants into the country from Pakistan via Turkey, Greece and the Lebanese-Syrian border.
But Director of Lebanon's Internal Security Forces General Ashraf Rifi denied the report, saying that "no al-Qaida Jihadist movement members are infiltrating into Palestinian refugee camps. Security in Lebanon is not exposed."
