BEIRUT - Lebanese military authorities have detained the Saudi leader of an al-Qaida-linked, Sunni militant group that claimed responsibility for a double suicide-bomb attack on the Iranian Embassy in Beirut in November, according to Lebanese news media.
The militant, Majid bin Muhammad al-Majid, is the head of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, an offshoot of al-Qaida. He was taken into custody just three days after Saudi Arabia pledged a $3 billion aid package to the Lebanese army. The gift was widely seen as a Saudi attempt to counter the influence of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia and political party that is allied with the Shiite government of Iran and with Syria’s president, Bashar Assad.
The detention, which U.S. national security officials confirmed to news agencies, has as its background the power struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which is assisting the Syrian government in fighting a rebellion.
An Iranian national security official, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, on Wednesday praised the Lebanese security forces for apprehending al-Majid and blamed him for the embassy bombing. He also urged the Lebanese government to consider the fact that “the main element in the operation is of Saudi nationality,” Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency reported.
While there was no immediate response from Saudi Arabia, there is little sympathy in its government for al-Majid, who is on its list of people most wanted for links with al-Qaida. A Lebanese newspaper, Asl-Safir, wrote that he was “wanted by Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and several other Western countries, mainly the United States.”
The Abdullah Azzam Brigades, which has also claimed responsibility for attacks in Egypt and Jordan, was formed in the crucible of the Iraqi insurgency in cooperation with al-Qaidain Mesopotamia, the al-Qaida franchise there. That was done on orders from Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the Sunni militant who was subsequently killed by U.S. troops, according to the Long War Journal, a website that follows counter terrorism efforts.
While founded well before the conflict in Syria, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades has allied itself with extremists among the rebels fighting Assad there and has threatened more attacks if Hezbollah does not stop sending its fighters to support him. Recently, al-Majid was reported to have pledged allegiance to the Nusra Front, another al-Qaida-linked group fighting in Syria.
Iran and Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanese ally and Lebanon’s most powerful political party, have backed Assad, while their Sunni Lebanese political rivals have supported the insurgency. Hezbollah has sent fighters to aid the government, and Lebanese Sunni militants have joined the rebels.
The Iranian off icial, Boroujerdi, said Lebanese security forces had arrested two people, including someone involved in “the assassination of the Hezbollah leader in Lebanon,” an apparent reference to the shooting death in December of Hassane Laqees, a senior Hezbollah militant. Citing the killers’ professionalism, Hezbollah had blamed the hit on Israel rather than Sunni jihadi groups.
Al-Majid’s detention was potentially sensitive in a divided Lebanon, especially under a caretaker government that has been in place for months because of political stalemate. The army has tried to maintain its reputation as the only largely neutral security agency, even as it remains too weak to challenge Hezbollah’s independent militia, and Lebanese Sunnis increasingly see it as leaning toward the Shiite party.
The war in Syria has been a fruitful recruiting tool and training ground for extremist Sunni militants in Lebanon, who have a long-standing presence but had been seen as fairly marginal before the Syrian conflict. Until recently, they had been mainly confined to pockets in Palestinian refugee camps outside the control of Lebanese authorities.
Now, with the Syrian war radicalizing some groups and Lebanese militants crossing the porous border to fight on both sides of the conflict, extremist fighters and clerics have increased their presence and influence in border areas, camps and cities.
Al-Majid lived in one of the camps, Ein al-Hilwe, near the southern city of Sidon until recently, according to Munir al-Maqdah, a commander in the Palestinian Fatah movement in the camp. Al-Maqdah said security officials had informed Fatah that al-Majid had entered the camp and later left for Syria.
While it is not known when al-Majid was detained, Hezbollah’s Al Manar television channel quoted Lebanese security officials as saying that an attack on a security checkpoint on Dec. 15 near Sidon and the Ein al-Hilwe camp was an attempt by militants to free him.
The Iranian Embassy bombing was one of several attacks in recent months to heighten fears that the increasingly sectarian conflict in Syria is producing violence in neighboring Lebanon, radicalizing the population and deepening Lebanon’s political and sectarian divisions.
In what have been seen as tit-for-tat attacks, car bombs have targeted Hezbollah-dominated neighborhoods in the southern suburbs of Beirut and Sunni mosques in the northern city of Tripoli. On Friday, a powerful car bomb killed Mohamad Chatah, a former Lebanese finance minister who was a major figure in the Future Movement, a political group that is Hezbollah’s main Sunni rival.
In other news, Syrian warplanes bombed on Wednesday a barren range of Lebanese hills used by Syrian rebels and refugees to cross between the two countries, wounding at least 10 Syrians who were rushed to a hospital in a nearby Lebanese town, Beirut’s state-run National News Agency said.
Cross-border strikes have been particularly intense this week around the town of Arsal, where thousands of Syrians have fled to escape their country’s civil war over the past months. The attack came days after Lebanese forces fired on Syrian helicopters near the border, an apparent attempt by Lebanon to signal that it would be forceful in defending its territory.
The state news agency did not explicitly say the airstrike occurred on Lebanese territory. But the area they mentioned, Jroud Arsal, refers to the barren rugged hills east of the town of Arsal that are within Lebanon.
Two Arsal residents said a wounded woman taken to the town after Wednesday’s air raid had died. They said three others are in critical condition. The residents spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing for their safety.
Later Wednesday evening, the area was hit again, this time with rockets, the state run news agency reported. No injuries were reported. The news agency did not say whether government forces or rebels fired the rockets that hit the Khirbat Daoud region, part of the Jroud Arsal.
Also Wednesday, state media and activists reported heavy clashes in the Damascus suburb of Adra, part of which was stormed by rebels last month.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said opposition fighters battled with troops from Assad’s army as well as pro-government militias known as the National Defense Forces and fighters from Hezbollah .
Information for this article was contributed by Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad of The New York Times and by Bassem Mroue and Diaa Hadid of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/02/2014