The United States has asked Lebanon for information on six Lebanese suspected of preparing attacks in Kuwait and allegedly linked to Islamist Osama bin Laden, Prosecutor General Adnan Addum said Wednesday.
Addum told AFP that he had received a letter on Tuesday from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warning of possible attacks in Kuwait in response to the US and British strikes against Afghanistan.
The letter was delivered to Addum by a liaison officer at the US embassy in Athens, whose scope of activities covers the Near East region.
The FBI requested information, via Interpol, about Rabih Ramez Nasrallah, owner of a bogus cleaning company in Kuwait, as well as Raydan Sayyed Najm, Nemr Hussein Hijazi, Osama Ghamlush, Bassam Ghaybeh and Hassan Shahine.
Addum said he asked Lebanese intelligence services to start an investigation into the case, but said that for the time being he could not specify if the suspects resided in Lebanon or abroad.
"This information is not necessarily well founded, even according to the FBI itself, but we are at the phase of verification," he said.
The FBI letter said that the six were believed to be linked to the al-Qaeda network, headed by bin Laden, the prime suspect in the September 11 terror attacks on the United States.
Until now, Interpol and the FBI have asked for information on only one Lebanese in connection with the attacks, Ziad Jarrah, who was killed in the hijacked jetliner which crashed in Pennsylvania.
Addum said he had also received from the Argentinean police via Interpol, the global police liaison organization, a request for information on three attacks committed in 1994 in Lebanon, and in which three Lebanese were killed.
One of the 1994 bombing attacks killed Fouad Mughniyeh, brother of Imad Mughniyeh, who is suspected of links with hostage-takings in Lebanon in the 1980s and whose whereabouts are unknown.
The Argentinean courts issued an arrest warrant for Imad Mughniyeh in 1999 for his alleged participation in a 1992 bombing attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires that killed 29 people.
Addum said the Argentinean police had also asked for information on another Lebanese identified as Nehmeh Ahmad Haidar, but did not give details on the motives behind the requests.
Argentina is investigating a car bombing against a Jewish charity center in Buenos Aires in 1994 which left 96 people dead and about 300 injured.
The trial of about 20 people accused of participating in the bombing started September 24 in Buenos Aires.
Meanwhile, Interior Minister Elias Murr said the government would pursue members of a Palestinian militant group, Osbat al Ansar, which has been named by US President George W. Bush as one of the 27 targets of his war on terror.
"Osbat al Ansar is an underground terrorist organizations which is active in the Palestinian refugee camps" in Lebanon, Osbat told the LBC television chain on Tuesday night.
"Several of its members are wanted and if we catch them they will be tried in Lebanon," the minister said.
Osbat al Ansar leader Abu Mahjan has been sentenced to the death penalty three times, notably for killing rival Islamists, and also been accused of an armed rebellion in the north of Lebanon in league with bin Laden supporters.
However, Murr admitted that Lebanese security forces have not cracked down on Abu Mahjan or his supporters, most of whom live in the Ain Heloue refugee camp, for political reasons linked to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
"But we continue to take preventative measures around the refugee camps," the minister said.
The head of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fateh faction in Lebanon, Sultan Abul Aynain, complained in an open letter to President Emile Lahoud later Wednesday at the "humiliating" restrictions on the camps -- BEIRUT (AFP)
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