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SYRIA: Notorious Islamist leader ‘captured or killed’

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Lebanon’s most notorious Islamic militant might have been captured or killed in Syria, according to a statement posted Monday on a website used by violent extremists.

Shaker Abssi, the leader of the Al Qaeda-inspired Fatah al Islam, might have been detained by Syrian authorities, but was most likely killed, said the statement reported by the U.S. monitoring service, SITE Intelligence Group:

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‘We don’t know his fate, but we believe he probably was martyred, but we don’t have solid evidence.’

Abssi, a onetime leftist Palestinian guerrilla turned Islamic militant, had been on the run since his group was defeated in September 2007 by the Lebanese army at a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon. The battle, which lasted for more than three months, led to the deaths of more than 400 people, including dozens of Palestinian civilians, 168 soldiers and 220 militants, according to officials.

The statement earlier this week said Abssi and two other members of his group were ambushed in Jermana, a small town south of Damascus, while trying to link up with veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan insurgencies.

The three men were either captured or killed in a gunfight with Syrian security forces, it added.

Many reports emerged about the fate of Abssi. Lebanese authorities had said that he was killed during the fighting and that his corpse was identified by family members. But DNA tests proved that the body in question was not Abssi’s.

In the recent months, local media reports suggested that Abssi had managed to escape from Lebanon and enter Syria via the porous northern border between the two countries. Some publications said that he was then captured by the Syrian security services and held in a prison near Damascus.

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Fatah al Islam was accused of carrying out two deadly attacks against the Lebanese military in August and September. Syrian official TV aired in October what it said were confessions by members of the group about planning the Sept. 27 car bombing that killed 17 people in a Shiite neighborhood of Damascus.

The statement said that a man called Abu Mohamad Awad was named the head of Fatah al Islam.

Lebanese authorities believe that members of the group are still hiding in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein el Hilwa, in the country’s south. Palestinian officials are negotiating with the remaining militants to turn themselves in so as to spare the highly populated camp a bloodshed, media reports said.

-- Raed Rafei in Beirut

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