Lebanese Forces Capture High-Ranking al-Qaida Member

The Lebanese Army Intelligence Directorate announced the arrest of a high-ranking member of al-Qaida on Saturday.

The Intelligence Directorate’s statement, which did not name the identity of the suspect, said that the arrest took place on Friday in the town of Deir Ammar, around 4 miles northeast of Tripoli. The arrest followed a significant security operation.

The suspect was “one of the most prominent leaders of al-Qaida and the founder of its cells in Lebanon,” the Intelligence Directorate said. It said that the suspect was one of the key players involved in the 2006 founding of Fatah al-Islam, a radical Islamist group in Lebanon that took inspiration from al-Qaida.

The statement said that the suspect had lain low after a 2007 battle between Fatah al-Islam and the Lebanese military at a refugee camp in northern Lebanon, only to return to prominence following the rise of the Islamic State group and the al-Nusra Front, a Syrian group also known as al-Qaida in the Levant.

The military is expected to interrogate the suspect in an attempt to obtain information that could be used to dismantle al-Qaida cells across Lebanon.

The Intelligence Directorate said that investigations are ongoing under the supervision of “competent judiciary bodies.”