Posted on 12/12/2003 11:57:40 AM PST by TexKat
BEIRUT, Lebanon - A Lebanese man was arrested Friday on suspicion he ordered a bomb attack against the American Embassy in Beirut, a senior security official said.
The official said Mehdi al-Hajj Hasan was detained after two men already in custody told interrogators he ordered them to carry out the bombing.
Authorities said they foiled the plot Wednesday when they arrested a Lebanese man carrying more than two pounds of explosives and a Palestinian taxi driver.
The men were arrested outside the U.S. Embassy complex. The device did not explode and no one was harmed.
The State Department recently urged Americans in Lebanon to keep a low profile, vary times and routes of travel and avoid Palestinian refugee camps because of growing tensions and anti-American rhetoric in the Middle East.
Earlier this year, Lebanese authorities uncovered a terrorist plot to kill U.S. Ambassador Vincent Battle and attack the U.S. Embassy and other Western targets.
Some 35 people have been indicted for bombing U.S. and British targets in Lebanon between May 2002 and April this year.
Security has been tight at the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon since the 1980s, when suicide bombers carried out two attacks on embassy buildings.
Ignoring for the moment the enormity of the crime that they were planning, wouldn't it be apparent that something strange was going on if the guy were carrying both explosives and a taxi driver?
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