Planners of Baku embassy attack released from jail
Two Lebanese citizens sentenced to 15 years in prison for planning to bomb Israeli embassy in Azerbaijan released from prison, apparently deported to Iran, according to media reports
Two Lebanese citizens who were convicted of planning terrorist attacks in Baku, including in the Israeli embassy, were released this week, according to reports from Azeri media and the Al Arabiya network.
Some of the reports noted that the two, who held ties with al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, were deported to Iran in exchange for an Azeri scientist who has spent the last two years in an Iranian prison.
The Azeri justice minister said that the two men were released together with 12 Iranians.
Najmaddin Ali Hussein and Karaki Ali Muhammad were sentenced to 15 years in prison last October for planning to carry out a terrorist attack in retaliation for the assassination of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh.
Terrorism experts said that the two headed a terrorist cell and traveled from Baku to Iran and Lebanon in early 2008 using Iranian passports.
The cell members held observations of Israel's Embassy in Baku, which is located inside the city's Hyatt Hotel. It is said the group planned on attacking other targets as well.
Hussein and Muhammad's plan was to simultaneously detonate three or four car bombs outside the embassy building and had obtained hundreds of kilograms of explosives for this purpose, allegedly from Iranian elements.
In May 2008, several weeks before the scheduled attack, the two noticed they were being followed and tried to escape to Iran. Azeri police forces managed to apprehend them and their car bombs, before they could carry out their plan.
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