BEIRUT: The Lebanese Army captured a militant on Wednesday, a day after he escaped from a high-security prison, security sources said.
Security forces combed large parts of Beirut in an effort to apprehend Taha Hajj Suleiman, a Syrian national, who is a member of the Al-Qaeda-inspired Fatah Al-Islam group.
He was found in the woods near Roumieh prison, east of Beirut, where he was being held on terrorism charges. Newspaper reports said eight inmates worked for two weeks on their jail break, sawing off the bars from their cell windows, tying bed sheets together to scale down the building and finally forming a human ladder to escape.
Hajj Suleiman managed to flee, but prison security officers arrested the seven other inmates, all Fatah Al-Islam members, who helped him escape.
Interior Minister Ziad Baroud, who has been criticized over the incident, ordered the detention of the prison warden, an officer in charge at the time of the escape and other guards. He also ordered the transfer of all police officers working in prisons.
Fatah Al-Islam fought the Lebanese Army in a 15-week battle at a Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon in 2007.
