BEIRUT - DNA tests on the body of a man suspected of being the wanted leader of Sunni extremist group Fatah al-Islam, Shaker al-Abssi, have proved negative, Lebanon's attorney general said on Monday.
Said Mirza said the Palestinian fighter could have escaped.
In a statement carried by state news agency NNA, Mirza said a Yemeni aide of Abssi had confessed to escaping from the besieged Nahr al-Bared camp in north Lebanon together with three other fighters.
Nasser Shiba told interrogators that Abssi was "in good health and armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle and an explosives belt, ammunition and grenades" at the time of their escape, the attorney general said.
Mirza said the suspect was arrested on Saturday in El-Minieh, near the bombed-out Palestinian refugee camp.
The statement added that DNA tests on the body of a man identified as being that of the Palestinian leader of Fatah al-Islam by his wife showed it was not of Shaker al-Abssi.
A military source said on September 10 that the wife had identified Abssi among the bodies of militants killed in fighting with the army, which seized control of Nahr al-Bared on September 2 after 15 weeks of deadly clashes.
She identified him at the morgue of the state-run hospital in the nearby city of Tripoli, the source told AFP. The wife, accompanied by her 14-year-old daughter and Palestinian clerics, was seen leaving the hospital in tears.
Troops have launched intensive search operations around the seafront camp of Nahr al-Bared since the battle ended with a desperate breakout attempt in which dozens of militants and soldiers were killed.
The army has said that in all it has killed at least 222 militants. It lost 163 troops during the siege.
nk/hc
09/10/2007 14:05 GMT