Hussein DakroubYoussef Diab| The Daily Star

BEIRUT: Army Intelligence is set to begin questioning radical preacher Ahmad al-Assir Tuesday shortly after General Security agents wrap up their own investigation with Lebanon’s most wanted fugitive, judicial sources said Monday.

“General Security will conclude its investigation with Assir Tuesday morning. Military Prosecutor Judge Saqr Saqr will then refer Assir along with the minutes of the probe to the Army Intelligence for further investigation because Assir is being prosecuted in cases that directly targeted the Army,” a judicial source told The Daily Star.

According to the source, Assir is now facing trial on two key issues: the deadly 2013 clashes that resulted in the deaths of 18 Army soldiers in Abra neighborhood, east of the southern city of Sidon, and opening fire on an Army patrol that left four soldiers dead in the northern district of Minyeh-Dinnieh during the military’s crackdown on extremists in north Lebanon last October.

The attack was carried out by Islamist preacher Sheikh Khaled Hoblos who works for Assir. Hoblos was arrested in the northern city of Tripoli last April.

Assir has been held by General Security since Saturday, when he was arrested at Beirut airport while trying to flee to Nigeria via Cairo using a fake Palestinian passport after more than two years on the run.

Information gleaned from Assir’s interrogation has so far led to the arrest of three people.

The notorious preacher is expected to begin a public trial at the Military Tribunal in a couple of weeks, though no date has been set yet.

A military judge last year demanded the death penalty for Assir and 56 others, including former pop singer Fadl Shaker, over the Abra clashes. In addition to the 18 soldiers, about 40 gunmen loyal to Assir were also killed in the two-day battle in Abra.

A judicial source following up the preliminary probe with Assir said that interrogation with the firebrand preacher focused on two important things: first, determining the people and group that helped Assir flee from the Bilal Bin Rabah Mosque in Abra following the outbreak of the clashes in June 2013 and the people who provided him with a shelter and helped him in moving from one area to another; and second, finding out the security activities Assir carried out in the past two years, the armed groups he formed and the security missions he assigned to these groups.For instance, Assir formed an armed group in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Bab al-Tabbaneh in Tripoli led by top Islamist fugitive Shadi Mawlawi and his colleague, Islamist militant Osama Mansour, who was killed in a security operation carried out by the Internal Security Forces’ Information Branch in Tripoli in April to arrest Hoblos.

During questioning Assir confessed to important security matters, while denying his involvement in other matters, the judicial source said.

The Army Intelligence’s investigation with Assir, in addition to the Abra clashes and the Mineyh attack, will deal with other security matters, including his ties with terror organizations like ISIS, and his role in the wave of explosions and car bombs that have rocked the country.

“Assir lived in the past months in the Ain al-Hilweh camp. Five days before he was arrested, he moved to live in the town of Jadra [in Iqlim al-Kharroub] where he received a fake Palestinian passport,” the source said.

The trial of 70 people linked to the Abra clashes which was scheduled to resume Tuesday is expected to be postponed following Assir’s arrest. The trial was supposed to hear defense lawyers’ arguments.

Assir’s second wife Amal Shamseddine claimed in a TV interview that her husband wanted to flee Lebanon in order to ease pressure on his supporters who were on the run. “He felt that his presence [in Lebanon] posed pressure on the youth [supporters]. He thought of fleeing Lebanon in order to ensure a sort of freedom for his supporters,” she said in an interview with MTV Monday night at her house in Sidon.

The woman, wearing a black veil, called on the Tripoli-based Muslim Scholars Committee to intervene to save her husband. Shamseddine denied that Assir was affiliated with either the Nusra Front or ISIS.

“But he supported these two organizations because they were fighting in the way of Allah,” she said. She added that Assir hid in more than one place after leaving Bilal Bin Rabbah Mosque.

Meanwhile, a man who works in an electronics store in Sidon was detained Monday after being suspected of ties to Assir. A security source told The Daily Star that General Security detained Lebanese national Hussam al-Rifai with information they had gathered during interrogations with Assir.

Army Intelligence also arrested in Sidon Masaab Kaddoura, a brother of one of Assir’s most wanted men, the National News Agency reported.

General Security chief Abbas Ibrahim Monday congratulated General Security officers and soldiers over Assir’s arrest.

After touring General Security sections at Beirut airport, Ibrahim told the officers: “The security achievement made with Assir’s arrest serves to consolidate the state’s prestige, the work of institutions and fighting terrorism at the local and international levels.”

He praised General Security’s efforts in the past two years which led to the discovery of 1,663 fake passports and entry visas. He urged General Security officers to continue their “mission in preserving security and stability and safeguarding national unity.”

MP Walid Jumblatt praised Assir’s arrest. “Let justice take its course in this file in order to establish justice in defense of the [military] martyrs who sacrificed their lives in defense of Lebanon, its security and stability,” he said in his weekly article in the Progressive Socialist Party’s online Al-Anbaa newspaper.