LEBANON: How the head of an Al Qaeda-inspired group fled the country

He has become a local Osama bin Laden, planning bomb attacks from his secret hideout and hurling threats against the Lebanese army through voice recordings.

But the mystery of his disappearance might be close to an end. In the last few days, new clues about the whereabouts of Shaker al-Abssi, the leader of an Al Qaeda-inspired group were revealed across the Lebanese media.

The 53-year-old Palestinian guerrilla allegedly managed to cross the Lebanese border into Syria after staying incognito for months at a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon, media reports and security officials said. 

Abssi, along with hundreds of Islamic fighters, engaged in fierce battles against the Lebanese army during the summer of 2007 before being crushed at the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared in northern Lebanon. Almost 400 people, including militants and soldiers, were killed.

Authorities first believed that Abssi died during the battles after his wife and other clerics who had known him identified one of the corpses found in the battlefield as his. But DNA tests showed that the body in question did not belong to Abssi.

The hunt for the man started and intensified after his group was implicated in a series of bomb attacks in Lebanon and Damascus. Lebanese security forces have recently arrested several Islamic radicals with suspected links to Fatah al-Islam. 

One of the detainees confessed that he helped Abssi escape in a white Mitsubishi van through the Bekaa Valley into the Syrian territory, a security official said.

Before fleeing the country, Abssi was helped by a radical Palestinian cleric to stay incognito for months in a northern Palestinian camp of Beddawi upon his escape from Nahr al-Bared, the official said speaking on condition of anonymity. 

Some media reports said that Abssi was disguised in the camp as a woman, totally covered in black, based on the confessions of the sheik, who was arrested last week.

Earlier, media reports said that Abssi was captured by Syrian authorities in Damascus and hauled off to prison.

Starting as a leftist guerrilla fighter, Abssi drifted toward Islamic groups and beliefs. Jordanian officials accused him of playing a role in the 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman. Syrians put him in jail that year, accusing him of plotting against the Damascus government, but let him go in 2005.

The recent crackdown on terror suspects in Lebanon was triggered by a series of confessions made by Fatah al-Islam members on the Syrian national TV less than two weeks ago. The members of the group, including Abssi’s daughter, said they helped carry the Sept. 27 bomb attack in Damascus that killed 17 people.

They also said they received financial support from the main Lebanese Sunni faction, the Future Movement.

This created a wave of indignation among Lebanon's anti-Syrian politicians, who accused Damascus of fabricating the televised confessions.

On Saturday, Al-Mustaqbal newspaper, owned by Future Movement leader Saad Hariri, published statements by Fatah al-Islam detainees alleging links between the group and Syrian intelligence.

Meanwhile, more evidence related to the group continued to surface in the Lebanese media.

On Monday, a local television station aired what it said were excerpts from telephone conversations between the head of the Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces, Ashraf Rifi, and a member from Fatah al-Islam.

In response, the ISF issued a statement on Tuesday to clarify the circumstances of the conversations, between a man who called Rifi and identified himself as the group’s negotiator on the day the security forces had launched a raid against the group.

-- Raed Rafei in Beirut

Photo: A Lebanese Muslim waves a flag with the Arabic writing during a demonstration near the Lebanese parliament in downtown Beirut to demand the release of Islamic activists alleged to be members of Fatah al-Islam, an Al-Qaeda-inspired group. Credit: Joseph Barrak / AFP/Getty Images

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