Sheikh mastermind of chain assassinations in Lebanon

A Salafi cleric has orchestrated the recent terrorist attacks in Beirut, including the assassination of Lebanon's political and religious figures, local media reports said. Sheikh Ahmed Al-Assir, a renowned Salafi Sheikh, has been behind the killings of a number of Lebanese figures, the Beirut-based Al-Joumhouria newspaper quoted informed security sources as saying on condition of anonymity. The militants of these groups have been turned into radical and terrorist groups who work on the orders they receive from abroad and they are fully ready to conduct terrorist attacks against the Lebanese army and assassinate political, security and religious personalities of Lebanon. Sheikh Al-Assir is close to Hariri family and he receives a considerable amount of cash from the same family to make Saida in Southern Lebanon insecure and orchestrate clashes with the Lebanese army, said the report. The report came after the Lebanese forces arrested a number of Saudi nationals for conducting the terrorist attacks in the country. On December 19, the Independent wrote that Saudi Arabia and Persian Gulf monarchies are sponsoring a sectarian war in the Middle-East region through supporting extremists. The UK-based newspaper added that the brutalities of Al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria and Iraq now has extended from Baghdad to Beirut and their anti-Shiite hostility threatens to set the whole region on fire. Earlier December, Iranian lawmakers took Takfiri groups affiliated to Riyadh responsible for the recent bombings in front of Tehran’s embassy in Beirut, which left 23 dead, including cultural attaché Ebrahim Ansari, saying that the terrorists have had the backup of Riyadh. “Such terrorist events are created by those who are the hirelings of the al-Saud,” member of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Avaz Heidarpour said in a press conference in Tehran. Naming the terrorist group which carried out the bombings against the Iranian embassy as ‘Abdullah Brigade’, he said the two main culprits behind the attack were Arab nationals. The two bomb blasts which happened mid November killed 23 people and injured 146 others near the Iranian embassy compound in the Lebanese capital. The attack targeted just 10 meters away from the embassy in Beirut’s Southern neighborhood of Jinah, inflicting much damage to the compound. Then later in December, the Lebanese police announced that they have identified the two suicide bombers who attacked the Iranian embassy in Beirut. Moin Abu Zahr, a Lebanese national who was born in 1992 and was a follower of Sunni Salafi Sheikh Ahmed Al-Assir has been identified as responsible for carrying out the first attack on the Iranian embassy. The second suicide bomber has been named as Omar Sobheh. Also, a person named al-Majed, arrested by the Lebanese forces, is the suspected head of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades – Ziad al-Jarrah Battalion that claimed responsibility for the attack on the Iranian embassy in Beirut. Al-Majed was announced as leader of the Brigades in 2012. The Lebanese security forces announced on Tuesday that they had arrested Al-Majed. The Abdullah Azzam Brigades was formed in 2009 and is believed to have branches in both the Arabian Peninsula and Lebanon, but may have been active as early as 2004. The reports come two days after a Lebanese minister told AFP that al-Majed had been arrested by the army's intelligence services, although no official statement has yet been issued over the detention. According to Lebanese state media, officials have confirmed the suspect's identity through DNA testing. "Al-Majed's DNA was compared with those of his cousin, which confirmed his identity," NNA reported. The Iranian embassy in Beirut requested on Thursday access to the investigation into the double suicide bombing. "The (caretaker) Foreign Ministry received a memo from Iranian authorities in which they asked to stay informed about the investigation with al-Majed, considering that the explosion took place on an Iranian soil,” caretaker Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour told LBCI television. For its part, the Lebanese news site Naharnet reported that Roknabadi announced that an Iranian intelligence delegation participated in inspecting the scene of the explosion near the embassy in Beirut's Southern suburbs. "Both Lebanese and Iranian authorities agreed that Iran will take part in the investigation,” the Iranian ambassador said. In 2009, Lebanon sentenced Majed in absentia to life in prison for belonging to a different extremist group, the Al-Qaeda-inspired Fatah al-Islam. After the attack against the Iranian mission, a heavy explosion rocked the capital Beirut last Friday targeting the convoy of former Finance Minister Mohammed Shatah, who was ex-Prime Minister Saad Hariri's advisor. An identification paper showing the name of ex-Minister Shatah was located in the area of the blast. The bodies of Shatah and his bodyguard were retrieved from the scene and transferred to Rafik Hariri University Hospital. The blast that hit Starco area in downtown Beirut near Bank Audi-SAL killed five people and at least 71 others wounded.