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Last update - 04:36 07/11/2008
Syria state TV airs Damascus car bombing 'confessions'
By The Associated Press
Tags: al-Qaida, Syria, Israel news 

Syrian state television broadcast late Thursday purported confessions of suspected Islamic militants claiming they had carried out a Damascus car bombing in September that killed 17 people.

Ten men and one woman, said to be members of the al-Qaida-inspired Fatah Islam group, were shown on TV late Thursday, making statements.

One of the men in the broadcast said the fugitive Fatah Islam leader Shaker al-Absi had made his way into Syria from Lebanon but hasn't been heard of since July. It wasn't clear when or how the suspects were arrested.
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The unusual broadcast reflected efforts by Syrian authorities to portray their country also as victim of al-Qaida-linked militants that the government is trying to crack down on.

The United States has accused Syria of not doing enough to curb the transit of militant fighters across its borders and into Iraq. A U.S. helicopter raid late October into Syria near Iraq's border targeted what U.S. officials said was a militant leader there. Damascus said eight civilians were killed and retaliated by ordering the U.S. cultural center and an American school in Damascus closed.

Syria's secular government has already accused militants of carrying out the rare Damascus bombing, but this was the first time Fatah Islam was blamed.

The group has been active in neighboring Lebanon, where it fought the army in 2007. During those battles, the Lebanese military crushed the al-Qaida-inspired group, killing hundreds at a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon where the militants had hunkered down.

Some of the militants and their leader were believed to have escaped the army siege of the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp. Recently, Fatah Islam was suspected in two bombings in northern Lebanon that killed 27 people, most of them soldiers.

The suspects who appeared on Syrian TV on Thursday recounted what they said was cross-border activity of the group, across the northern Lebanon border, reaching into the Syrian capital of Damascus, and even crossing Syria's border with Iraq.

The woman shown among the group wore a black headscarf. She was identified as Wafa, al-Absi's daughter.

Another man, identified as Abdul-Baki Hussein and said to be the security chief of Fatah Islam, claimed that the leader was smuggled into Syria where he disappeared without a trace.

Hussein said the group chose al-Absi's hand-picked successor, a militant named Abu Mohammed Awad, as their leader. He added that the successor is now based in another part of Lebanon, the Ein el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in the country's south.

In the broadcast, Hussein recounted how a Saudi man, Abou Ayshah, carried out the suicide bombing Sept. 27 with a car stolen from an Iraqi driver in Damascus and packed with explosives outside Damascus. The bomb was detonated in the Kazzaz neighborhood.

The TV broadcast also aired an old photograph of the alleged bomber, with an injured eye.

Hussein said the group had planned to attack Syrian security offices and an Italian and a British diplomat.

The broadcast also showed captured militant weapons, including TNT, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, automatic rifles and hand grenades.

The suspects claimed they had links to Lebanon's main Sunni Future Movement of pro-Western parliament majority leader Saad Hariri as well as Sunni Salafist groups based in northern Lebanon.

Future has frequently denied such links. The movement and other anti-Syrian groups in Lebanon claim Fatah Islam was the creation of Syrian intelligence with the purpose of destabilizing Lebanon.

Syria deployed troops along Lebanon's northern border in recent weeks after its government said militants in northern Lebanon posed a security threat.

Related articles:
  • 17 killed in massive car bombing in Damascus
  • Syrian diplomat: Syria reserves right to respond to U.S. attack
  • Heavy fighting in north Lebanon camp; gunman, 2 soldiers killed (2007)
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