Palestinian militant leader in Lebanon spotlight

Nahr al-Bared (Lebanon), Mar 26: Moments before the cameras are switched on, Shaker al-Abssi adjusts his traditional Palestinian kaffiyeh headdress to cover his face.

Fully aware that his enemies have pictures of him, he still seeks to conceal his features to stay as unrecognisable as possible at his latest surroundings in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon.

Abssi has come under the spotlight in Lebanon since November when he and 200 fighters broke off from the pro-Syrian Fatah Uprising group and founded their own faction: Fatah al-Islam.

The group quickly earned notoriety and was alternately linked to al Qaeda and Syria, raising fears that Lebanon could witness large-scale attacks on Western and other targets.

Some media reports said the group was being funded by mainstream Sunni Muslim Lebanese politicians and wealthy Saudis.

''All these contradictions are proof that these accusations are not true,'' the soft-spoken Abssi, clad in military fatigues, told Reuters at his headquarters in the camp.

He said Fatah al-Islam's main mission was to reform the Palestinian refugee community in Lebanon according to Islamic sharia law before moving on to tackle Israel.

''There are no organisational links to al Qaeda,'' Abssi said.

''We agree that we (should) fight the infidels. Every Muslim's ambition is to fight the infidels.'' Security sources say scores of militants from other refugee camps have joined the group and were undergoing military training at a base in Nahr al-Bared.

The Lebanese army has tightened its presence around the camp but Lebanese forces are banned from entering Palestinian camps under an Arab agreement reached in 1969.

Death Sentence

Abssi had been sentenced to death in absentia in Jordan for the killing of a US diplomat in 2002. The slain leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, received a similar sentence for the same crime.

Abssi denies the link and says he was jailed in Syria for two years and seven months from 2002 for planning an attack on Israeli forces in the occupied Golan Heights.

Lebanese authorities, who maintain that the group is nothing more than a front for Syrian intelligence, said earlier this month that four Syrian members had admitted to carrying out a twin bus bombing in a Christian area northeast of Beirut that killed three people in February.

Abssi, who denied that charge, says his group was the object of a campaign to discredit it as a prelude to military confrontation.

''I believe that there is a move ... against us,'' he said.

''There is a will to escalate, we have found recently harmonisation between some (Palestinian) sides and the Lebanese state, even full military coordination.'' A Western diplomat at an Arab capital said members of militant Sunni groups, including Fatah al-Islam, were driven from Syria to Lebanon as a result of a crackdown by the Syrian authorities that intensified last year.

''The Syrians are getting concerned about al Qaeda but what did they expect after turning a blind eye to them for so long?'' the diplomat said.

He said Damascus has so far declined Western requests to share intelligence on al Qaeda or similar organisations and that Syrian security mounted an estimated 100 operations against militants starting from last year.

A Syrian official declined to comment on the reports but confirmed unannounced operations have been mounted against Fatah al-Islam and other groups in which militants were killed.

The 51-year-old Abssi says he was a guerrilla in Yasser Arafat's Fatah group decades ago. He said he was dispatched to fight alongside the Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua in 1980.

Three years later, he joined a rebellion against Arafat in Lebanon's Palestinian refugee camps and became a member of the breakaway Fatah Uprising that established its headquarters in Damascus.

Before forming his own group, he says he was in charge of Fatah Uprising's military arm in charge of working inside Palestinian territories.

Asked about reports that he had fought alongside insurgents in Iraq, Abssi said: ''This is an honour that I haven't had.''

REUTERS