Posted on 05/08/2003 7:46:55 AM PDT by prairiebreeze
BEIRUT, Lebanon - A terrorist network led by a Yemeni national planned to kill the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon earlier this year by firing a rocket-propelled grenade into his car, judicial officials said Thursday.
The attack was to have taken place during a visit by U.S. Ambassador Vincent Battle to the northern port city of Tripoli on Jan. 15, the officials said on condition of anonymity.
It was foiled when the envoy's motorcade changed its route, said three Lebanese newspapers, citing security and other judicial sources.
The unidentified Yemeni man behind the plot is hiding in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein el-Hilweh in southern Lebanon, Prosecutor General Adnan Addoum told the As-Safir newspaper.
Lebanese authorities do not enter the camp, which is notorious for its lawlessness.
Addoum was not immediately available for comment.
On Wednesday, the Lebanese army alluded to an assassination attempt against a foreign ambassador. It said army intelligence, in cooperation with Syrian forces based in Lebanon, arrested a number of people for their involvement in a string of "terrorist acts" targeting fast-food restaurants and a supermarket as well as "an abortive attempt to assassinate the ambassador of a major power."
The U.S. Embassy in Beirut declined to comment on the matter when contacted by The Associated Press Thursday.
Judicial and security officials quoted by the leading An-Nahar newspaper Thursday said Khaled Mohammed al-Ali, a leader of a terrorist network suspected of involvement in anti-Western attacks, has provided interrogators with information on the assassination plot. Al-Ali's arrest was announced Sunday.
The attacks came amid rising anti-American sentiment in the region in the run-up to the Iraq (news - web sites) war.
In 1978, U.S. Ambassador Francis E. Meloy Jr. was kidnapped and killed in Lebanon.
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