Lebanese army arrests 3 over funding Syria militants

Lebanese army forces have arrested three people, including two Syrian nationals, on charges of conducting financial operations in Lebanon on behalf of militant groups operating inside Syria.

“Lebanese national Mohammed Dahrouj and Syrian citizens Ahmad Najjar and Ayman Ghotmeh were arrested by the Intelligence Directorate in Beirut yesterday,” the army said in a statement released on Thursday.

The statement added, “The detainees have confessed to transferring huge sums of money from Lebanon and other countries to Syria in a crooked manner.”

Dahrouj had been previously arrested on charges of transferring rocket-propelled grenades from Lebanon to Syria, the Lebanese army said.

“Sums of money have been seized as a probe got underway under the supervision of the relevant judicial authorities,” the statement pointed out.

On May 3, Lebanese security forces arrested Ibrahim al-Barakat, a Lebanese man accused of being a recruiting agent for the ISIL Takfiri militant group.

A security source, requesting anonymity, said Barakat was arrested while trying to flee northern Lebanon to Turkey using a fake passport.

Barakat, who is in his 40s, is accused of recruiting young men from Lebanon’s northern city of Tripoli, situated 85 kilometers (52 miles) north of the capital, Beirut, to fight alongside ISIL extremists in Syria and neighboring Iraq.

Over the past months, Lebanon has been suffering from terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda-affiliated militants as well as random rocket attacks, which are viewed as a spillover of the conflict in Syria.