Lebanon detainee believed tied to bombings
Suspected leader of al-Qaida-linked group
BEIRUT — DNA tests confirmed that a man in Lebanese custody is the suspected leader of an al-Qaida-linked group that has claimed responsibility for bombings across the Middle East, the Lebanese army said Friday.
In a brief statement, the military said the tests established the detainee’s identity as Majid al-Majid, a Saudi citizen and the commander of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades. Al-Majid is on Saudi Arabia’s list of 85 most-wanted individuals, and the U.S. State Department has designated the group he leads a foreign terrorist organization.
The group has claimed responsibility for attacks throughout the region, including the 2010 bombing of a Japanese oil tanker in the Persian Gulf and several rocket attacks from Lebanon into Israel. The latest attack claimed by the group was the Nov. 19 double bombing of the Iranian Embassy in Beirut that killed at least 23 people and wounded dozens.
In 2012, the U.S. declared the Abdullah Azzam Brigades a terrorist group. The State Department’s action froze any assets it holds in the U.S and banned Americans from doing business with the group.
The Lebanese authorities have not disclosed when or where alMajid was arrested.
Al-Majid took over the group in mid-2012 after the organization’s previous leader, Saleh al-Qarawi, was gravely wounded in Pakistan, said Mustafa Alani, the director of the security department at the Geneva-based Gulf Research Center.
Al-Majid, who is believed to have serious kidney problems that require dialysis, was an important figure, and the group grew from a relatively small outfit to a larger player under his leadership, Alani said.
“It’s become much bigger. Majid al-Majid was able to recruit a lot of Iraqis, Syrians, Lebanese,” Alani said. “He’s more active, and far more clever than Qarawi.”
Al-Majid, who lived for a period of time in the Ein el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp outside the Lebanese port city of Sidon, shifted the group’s attention after he took control from its earlier anti-western and anti-Saudi line and focused instead on the civil war in Syria and the fight to oust that country’s president, Bashar Assad, Alani said.
In the spring of 2013, after the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah group announced that it was fighting alongside Assad’s troops against the Syrian rebels, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades began to target Hezbollah as well — and by extension, its Iranian patrons.
“Since Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria, they started to focus their attention on Hezbollah,” Alani said. “Before that, they had no problem with Hezbollah.”
In its claim of responsibility for the deadly Iranian Embassy bombing in Beirut, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades threatened more attacks against Hezbollah unless the group withdrew its fighters from Syria.
In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the Islamic Republic is planning to send a team to Lebanon to assist in the process of questioning al-Majid.