21 Fateh al-Islam detainees scheduled for hearing today

Members of the Judicial Council will interrogate on Friday 21 Islamist detainees involved in the Nahr al-Bared clashes after which the Council will hold a session for the Bahsas bombing cases and Dennie incidents to determine personal compensation to the victims and their families.             

On May 19, 2007, the Lebanese Internal Security Forces (ISF) surrounded a group of Fatah al-Islam militants accused of taking part in a bank robbery earlier that day. The ISF attacked the building the next day, unleashing a day long battle between the ISF and Fatah al-Islam militants on 200 Street, Tripoli. As a response, members of Fatah al-Islam in Nahr al-Bared Camp attacked an army checkpoint, killing several soldiers in their sleep. The army immediately responded.                        

The camp became the center of the fighting between the Lebanese Army and Fatah al-Islam. It sustained heavy shelling while under siege. The last civilians (25 women and 38 children, the families of Fatah al-Islam members) were evacuated from the camp on Friday August 24, 2007.                          

The conflict between the Lebanese Army and Fatah al-Islam ended on Sunday September 2, 2007 with the Lebanese Army taking full control of the camp after eliminating the remaining terrorist pockets.                          

168 Lebanese army soldiers and 226 militants were killed in the 105 day conflict. Between 400 and 500 soldiers had been wounded and more than 215 militants had been captured.                 

President of the Judicial Council Judge Jean Fahd set Friday 8th of February 2013, a date to start preliminary interrogations of Islamist detainees in the case of the Nahr el-Bared incidents paving the way to start trials before the Council.                                

Attacks against the Lebanese Armed Forces were not limited to the Naher el-Bared clashes. A remote control car bomb packed with ball bearings ripped through a military bus on Monday 29 September 2009, killing four soldiers and a civilian in Lebanon’s northern city of Tripoli that has been tormented by sectarian violence.             

It was the second deadly attack targeting troops in northern Lebanon in less than two months. Suspicion immediately fell on an al-Qaida-inspired Islamic movement that has been locked in bitter conflict with the army since the Naher al-Bared incidents.            

In 1999-January 2000 an Islamic group launched a failed uprising against the Lebanese authorities in the Dinnieh district. In a period of 8 days of fighting in the snow-blanketed mountains east of the northern port of Tripoli, 14 soldiers and 25 rebels were killed