Army Intelligence to Be Tasked with Naim Abbas Investigations after his Recent Confessions
General Prosecutor Judge Samir Hammoud announced that he has tasked State Commissioner to the Military Court Judge Saqr Saqr to send him a copy of the testimony made by Palestinian detainee Naim Abbas, reported the pan-Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat on Sunday.
Hammoud told the daily that he had ordered the Army Intelligence to carry out preliminary investigations with Abbas over his recent testimony on the assassination of General Francois al-Hajj and plans to assassinate Progressive Socialist Party chief MP Walid Jumblat.
A judicial source told the daily that the investigation in Abbas' case “has not yet reached serious leads over the perpetrators of the Hajj assassination.”
Suspicions however surround the Fatah al-Islam group, seeing as Hajj was organizing the army's operations against the extremist group during the 2007 clashes.
The group waged months-long battles with the army in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in the North.
Hajj was killed in a car bombing in December later that year.
Media reports on Saturday said that Abbas had confessed to the Military Court that the Syrian regime had ordered Hajj's assassination “because he had been requested to demarcate the Lebanese-Syrian border.”
Two other detainees, Mohammed Ezzeddine and Salim Abou al-Ghosh, admitted that they had provided Abbas with the necessary explosive material to carry out Hajj's assassination
Abbas denied however that he was involved in the murder.
He did reveal however that a detainee named Toufiq Taha had informed him that a “mediator from the Syrian regime had asked him to assassinate MP Walid Jumbat.”
Abbas, a top official of the extremist Abdullah Azzam Brigades, was arrested in February 2014 on terrorism charges.
The Brigades has claimed responsibility for several bombings that have targeted Hizbullah strongholds over the past few years since the war in Syria erupted in 2011.
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