Terrorists Confess to Plot to Establish Islamist Emirate in North
Several terrorist detainees have confessed to a plot by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to stage a ground offensive and control several regions in northern Lebanon to announce the establishment of the Islamic State in Lebanon.
A high-ranking military source told al-Joumhouria newspaper published on Tuesday that Imad Jomaa, Ahmed Miqati and several other detainees admitted that the ground offensive aimed at opening a corridor to the sea across northern Lebanon by connecting Arsal with Hermel, Dinniyeh, Akkar and ultimately the coastal city of Tripoli.
Imad Jomaa is a member of the al-Qaida-affiliate al-Nusra Front whose arrest sparked the Arsal unrest in August, and Miqati was arrested in October in the town of Assoun in the northern district of Dinniyeh during a deadly army raid on an apartment that he and several militants had been residing in.
The source told the newspaper that the detainees are linked to ISIL and not the Qaida-affiliated al-Nusra Front and take direct orders from the command.
“The group's kingpin in Lebanon is being pursued by the army and will be arrested soon,” the source said.
The terrorists also were planning to carry out a wide-scale assault against the army and seeking to recruit more soldiers to increase defections from the military.
The army has come under growing attacks across Lebanon by militants who accuse it of colluding with Hizbullah in its intervention in the Syrian conflict on the side of the regime.
In October, eighteen suspected members of the Islamic State jihadist group were indicted on charges of aiming to set up an "emirate" in northern Lebanon.
Fifteen of the accused are on the run.
Tripoli was rocked by three days of devastating fighting between troops and gunmen last month that left several soldiers and civilians dead.
The gunmen are suspected of having links to al-Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of al-Qaida, which opposes IS inside Syria although they have an ambivalent relationship in Lebanon.
H.K.
G.K.
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