Detainee Reveals ISIS Plot to Assassinate Lebanon’s Jumblat

Lebanese leader MP Walid Jumblat. (Reuters)
Lebanese leader MP Walid Jumblat. (Reuters)
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Detainee Reveals ISIS Plot to Assassinate Lebanon’s Jumblat

Lebanese leader MP Walid Jumblat. (Reuters)
Lebanese leader MP Walid Jumblat. (Reuters)

A Palestinian detainee in Lebanon, held on terrorism charges, revealed that the ISIS terrorist group had plotted to assassinate Druze leader MP Walid Jumblat, as well as carry out a number of attacks in the country.

Imad Yassine told a court where he was standing trial that ISIS sought to storm with a car bomb Jumblat’s Mokhtara residence in Mount Lebanon or his home in Beirut. The leader would then be assassinated “because he is the smartest politician in Lebanon,” added the suspect.

The detainee said that creating sectarian strife and sparking civil war in Lebanon was the goal of the plot.

Yassine said that ISIS member Mohammed Kota informed him of the plot.

The group had even carried out surveillance against the target, but that was as far as the plan got before it was abandoned, he told the court.

He said that he opposed assassinating Jumblat because he had championed the Palestinian cause for decades.

Yassine, who is described as the ISIS leader in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Hilweh in southern Lebanon, was arrested by Lebanese military intelligence in October 2016.

The arrest was made during a swift operation after authorities had received information that a series of terrorist attacks were going to be carried out in the country.

The suspect said that he and other ISIS members in the refugee camp had set a number of potential targets in Lebanon. They included the country’s infrastructure, especially tourist locations, such as the central commercial district in Downtown Beirut and Casino du Liban north of the capital.

They also plotted to target the Zahrani gas station, Jiyeh power plant, the main market in the southern city of Nabatiyeh and a restaurant in the coastal city of Jounieh.

Yassine explained that his role was to simply attend the ISIS meeting in order to set the pace and make sure that the plotters were not hasty in their actions.

The plotters included Mohammed al-Chechani, one of the most prominent ISIS members, and his aide Jamal al-Moubayed and Kota.

The detainee denied that he was the ISIS leader in Ain el-Hilweh, asking: “How can I be the leader and wander around the camp without any guards. I was even arrested while I was headed alone to the mosque.”

Earlier on Monday, State Commissioner to the Military Court Judge Saqr Saqr charged Ali al-Hujairi, former municipal chief of the northeastern border town of Arsal, with belonging to an “armed terrorist group (al-Nusra Front).”

He was also charged with facilitating the infiltration of gunmen to take part in clashes against the Lebanese army in 2012, 2013 and 2014.

Hujairi was charged with kidnapping Lebanese and foreign nationals, handing them over to terrorist groups and releasing them in exchange for ransom.



Evidence of Ongoing 'Crimes Against Humanity' in Darfur, Says ICC Deputy Prosecutor

A boy sits atop a hill overlooking a refugee camp near the Chad-Sudan border, November 9, 2023. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig/File Photo
A boy sits atop a hill overlooking a refugee camp near the Chad-Sudan border, November 9, 2023. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig/File Photo
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Evidence of Ongoing 'Crimes Against Humanity' in Darfur, Says ICC Deputy Prosecutor

A boy sits atop a hill overlooking a refugee camp near the Chad-Sudan border, November 9, 2023. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig/File Photo
A boy sits atop a hill overlooking a refugee camp near the Chad-Sudan border, November 9, 2023. REUTERS/El Tayeb Siddig/File Photo

There are "reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity" are being committed in war-ravaged Sudan's western Darfur region, the deputy prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) said.

Outlining her office's probe of the devastating conflict which has raged since 2023, Nazhat Shameem Khan told the UN Security Council that it was "difficult to find appropriate words to describe the depth of suffering in Darfur," AFP reported.

"On the basis of our independent investigations, the position of our office is clear. We have reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity, have been and are continuing to be committed in Darfur," she said.

The prosecutor's office focused its probe on crimes committed in West Darfur, Khan said, interviewing victims who fled to neighboring Chad.

She detailed an "intolerable" humanitarian situation, with apparent targeting of hospitals and humanitarian convoys, while warning that "famine is escalating" as aid is unable to reach "those in dire need."

"People are being deprived of water and food. Rape and sexual violence are being weaponized," Khan said, adding that abductions for ransom had become "common practice."

"And yet we should not be under any illusion, things can still get worse."

The Security Council referred the situation in Darfur to the ICC in 2005, with some 300,000 people killed during conflict in the region in the 2000s.

In 2023, the ICC opened a fresh probe into war crimes in Darfur after a new conflict erupted between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The RSF's predecessor, the Janjaweed militia, was accused of genocide two decades ago in the vast western region.

ICC judges are expected to deliver their first decision on crimes committed in Darfur two decades ago in the case of Ali Mohamed Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, known as Ali Kosheib, after the trial ended in 2024.

"I wish to be clear to those on the ground in Darfur now, to those who are inflicting unimaginable atrocities on its population -- they may feel a sense of impunity at this moment, as Ali Kosheib may have felt in the past," said Khan.

"But we are working intensively to ensure that the Ali Kosheib trial represents only the first of many in relation to this situation at the International Criminal Court," she added.