BEIRUT: Fatah al-Islam leader Shaker al-Abssi's wife stood firm on Tuesday that the corpse she saw in Tripoli was the body of her husband, in spite of DNA tests showing the dead man was not Abssi, according to two media reports. "When I first saw him I was shocked by the extent of his wounds, but I knew it was him," Rishdiyeh al-Abssi, 50, told Agence France Presse (AFP) in a telephone interview on Tuesday. "I recognized his face, his white beard, his height and his feet."
Late on Monday she told Al-Jazeera by telephone that she had seen distinguishing wounds on his face and chin that verified his identity. "The body I saw was that of my husband," she said to Al-Jazeera.
However, State Prosecutor Saeed Mirza released on Monday the results of DNA testing proving with 99.99-percent certainty that the corpse was not Abssi. Mirza averred that Abssi, 52, had fled the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp on September 1, hours before a failed mass escape attempt by the few dozen Fatah al-Islam militants remaining after a three-month Lebanese Army siege of the camp.
Lebanese authorities compared the corpse's DNA with samples from Abssi's wife, five of their children and Abssi's brother in Jordan, Mirza's report said. Abssi's family are among 51 women and children residing in Sidon's Al-Arqum Mosque, where Palestinian clerics brought them after they were evacuated from the battered Nahr al-Bared camp on August 23.
Mirza can order more DNA testing if the evidence warrants, but the reliability of such testing and the laboratories which performed it make a repeat of the procedure unlikely, legal expert Ziad Baroud told The Daily Star.
"I don't see why it could be reconsidered," he said.
Other parties involved in the investigation can ask for further tests, but Mirza does not have to heed their request, Baroud added.
Those who wrongly identified the corpse could also face charges for giving false information and obstructing justice if the judiciary determines they intentionally misled investigators, Baroud added.
"If they were likely to identify the body and they on purpose misled justice, then yes," he said.
Mirza supported the DNA findings with testimony from a Yemeni Fatah al-Islam militant captured on September 8 who said he had escaped the Nahr al-Bared camp with Abssi. The 24-year-old Yemeni said Abssi was in good health, wearing a belt of explosives and armed with an AK-47 and hand grenades.
When word spread that Abssi was alive, members of the militant Palestinian Islamist group Jund al-Sham celebrated the news with gunfire and fireworks at the restive Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp in Sidon. Two Lebanese Army soldiers and two Palestinian militants were killed at Ain al-Hilweh in fighting on June 3-4 during the conflict at Nahr al-Bared.http://www.dailystar.com.lb
Inside Nahr al-Bared on Tuesday, three army troops were wounded while disposing of land mines and booby traps left behind by Fatah al-Islam, said another AFP report.
Soldiers have continued clearing explosives from the camp and searching for fugitive Fatah al-Islam members since the abortive breakout bid on September 2. The army lost 164 soldiers in the 15-week conflict and killed more than 220 militants and captured more than 200, according to official figures.
Up until the day before the escape attempt, Qatari mediators were still trying to broker the surrender of the remaining militants, said a report in Tuesday's edition of Ash-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper.
Abssi moved with some 100 men to Nahr al-Bared last fall to found Fatah al-Islam after breaking with the Syrian-backed militant group Fatah al-Intifada in Beirut's Shatila refugee camp, said an AFP report.
Abssi had served three years in a Syrian prison from 2002-05 for membership in a banned Islamist group and for preparing attacks, the report added. While in jail, a Jordanian court sentenced him to death in absentia for helping plot the 2002 assassination in Amman of US diplomat Laurence Foley.
Born in the Ain Sultan refugee camp near the West Bank town of Jericho in 1955, Abssi fled with his family to Jordan after Israel occupied the territory in the 1967 war, the report said. Abssi's brother Abdul Razzaq, an orthopedic surgeon in Amman, described the militant leader as a "brilliant" student who left for Tunis to study medicine, although his ultimate goal was to work for "the liberation of Palestine."
Abssi joined Fatah, the mainstream faction which then led the Palestine Liberation Or-ganization, and Fatah sent him to Libya to learn to fly Russian MiG fighters.
"He was very successful. He piloted the MiG-23. When Libya went to war with Chad, he defended Libyan territory with his plane," Abssi's brother told AFP.
When Abssi's brother was a medical student in Cuba in 1981, he was visited by the future Fatah al-Islam leader, who was en route to Nicaragua to help train a Sandinista air force, the brother added.
Abssi fought in Lebanon in 1982 in the Bekaa Valley after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, although he left to fly again in the Libyan Air Force, his brother told AFP.
Abssi chose radical Islam out of "frustration" with the failures of Arab nationalist and leftist movements to secure a Palestinian state, his brother added.
In an interview with The New York Times in March, Abssi declared his allegiance to Osama bin Laden. - With AFP
Late on Monday she told Al-Jazeera by telephone that she had seen distinguishing wounds on his face and chin that verified his identity. "The body I saw was that of my husband," she said to Al-Jazeera.
However, State Prosecutor Saeed Mirza released on Monday the results of DNA testing proving with 99.99-percent certainty that the corpse was not Abssi. Mirza averred that Abssi, 52, had fled the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp on September 1, hours before a failed mass escape attempt by the few dozen Fatah al-Islam militants remaining after a three-month Lebanese Army siege of the camp.
Lebanese authorities compared the corpse's DNA with samples from Abssi's wife, five of their children and Abssi's brother in Jordan, Mirza's report said. Abssi's family are among 51 women and children residing in Sidon's Al-Arqum Mosque, where Palestinian clerics brought them after they were evacuated from the battered Nahr al-Bared camp on August 23.
Mirza can order more DNA testing if the evidence warrants, but the reliability of such testing and the laboratories which performed it make a repeat of the procedure unlikely, legal expert Ziad Baroud told The Daily Star.
"I don't see why it could be reconsidered," he said.
Other parties involved in the investigation can ask for further tests, but Mirza does not have to heed their request, Baroud added.
Those who wrongly identified the corpse could also face charges for giving false information and obstructing justice if the judiciary determines they intentionally misled investigators, Baroud added.
"If they were likely to identify the body and they on purpose misled justice, then yes," he said.
Mirza supported the DNA findings with testimony from a Yemeni Fatah al-Islam militant captured on September 8 who said he had escaped the Nahr al-Bared camp with Abssi. The 24-year-old Yemeni said Abssi was in good health, wearing a belt of explosives and armed with an AK-47 and hand grenades.
When word spread that Abssi was alive, members of the militant Palestinian Islamist group Jund al-Sham celebrated the news with gunfire and fireworks at the restive Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp in Sidon. Two Lebanese Army soldiers and two Palestinian militants were killed at Ain al-Hilweh in fighting on June 3-4 during the conflict at Nahr al-Bared.http://www.dailystar.com.lb
Inside Nahr al-Bared on Tuesday, three army troops were wounded while disposing of land mines and booby traps left behind by Fatah al-Islam, said another AFP report.
Soldiers have continued clearing explosives from the camp and searching for fugitive Fatah al-Islam members since the abortive breakout bid on September 2. The army lost 164 soldiers in the 15-week conflict and killed more than 220 militants and captured more than 200, according to official figures.
Up until the day before the escape attempt, Qatari mediators were still trying to broker the surrender of the remaining militants, said a report in Tuesday's edition of Ash-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper.
Abssi moved with some 100 men to Nahr al-Bared last fall to found Fatah al-Islam after breaking with the Syrian-backed militant group Fatah al-Intifada in Beirut's Shatila refugee camp, said an AFP report.
Abssi had served three years in a Syrian prison from 2002-05 for membership in a banned Islamist group and for preparing attacks, the report added. While in jail, a Jordanian court sentenced him to death in absentia for helping plot the 2002 assassination in Amman of US diplomat Laurence Foley.
Born in the Ain Sultan refugee camp near the West Bank town of Jericho in 1955, Abssi fled with his family to Jordan after Israel occupied the territory in the 1967 war, the report said. Abssi's brother Abdul Razzaq, an orthopedic surgeon in Amman, described the militant leader as a "brilliant" student who left for Tunis to study medicine, although his ultimate goal was to work for "the liberation of Palestine."
Abssi joined Fatah, the mainstream faction which then led the Palestine Liberation Or-ganization, and Fatah sent him to Libya to learn to fly Russian MiG fighters.
"He was very successful. He piloted the MiG-23. When Libya went to war with Chad, he defended Libyan territory with his plane," Abssi's brother told AFP.
When Abssi's brother was a medical student in Cuba in 1981, he was visited by the future Fatah al-Islam leader, who was en route to Nicaragua to help train a Sandinista air force, the brother added.
Abssi fought in Lebanon in 1982 in the Bekaa Valley after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, although he left to fly again in the Libyan Air Force, his brother told AFP.
Abssi chose radical Islam out of "frustration" with the failures of Arab nationalist and leftist movements to secure a Palestinian state, his brother added.
In an interview with The New York Times in March, Abssi declared his allegiance to Osama bin Laden. - With AFP
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