Dubai: An Omani has been sentenced to life in prison in Lebanon for fighting the Lebanese army alongside the Fatah Al Islam jihadist group that was crushed in 2007 by the army.

The ruling has for the first time revealed the involvement of Omanis in the conflict that raged in Lebanon between Islamist militants and the Lebanese army in 2007.

Mohammad Khalaf Al Jaberi, who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Turki Al Omani and Abu Al Fdheil, was given a life sentence and a fine of 500,000 Lebanese pound (Dh1,214.25) by the Lebanese Judicial Council last Friday, according to Lebanese media.

According to the Lebanese daily Al Nahar, the court ruling noted that Al Jaberi flew into the country in 2006 with two of his Omani friends, Ahmad Al Khoury, also known as Abu Bilal, and Ahmad Al Mutawa, known as Abu Suhaib, both of whom were killed in the fierce fighting that ensued in the Nahr Al Bared Palestinian refugee camp in May, 2007.

In Beirut, Al Jaberi met a man who told him that he belongs to a jihadist group that aims to liberate Palestine. The Omanis then moved between Palestinian refugee camps in the Lebanese capital where they met other jihadist recruits from a number of countries such as Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Syria, according to Al Nahar. They eventually ended up in the Naher Al Bared camp, where Al Jaberi joined Fatah Al Islam and pledged allegiance to its Palestinian leader, Shakir Al Absi.

Al Jaberi was subsequently trained in the use of light weapons and fighting, was handed a Kalashnikov and made a member of the Salah Al Deen guard. During the subsequent confrontation with the Lebanese army, the Omani shot at military centres, destroying some of them. He was injured in the leg by a mortar, leading him to withdraw from fighting for 20 days to be treated. Following his recovery, he resumed operations targeting the army. He is reported to have later fled the camp and subsequently captured by the army.

In January, 2013 a jihadist site posted what appeared to be an appeal from Al Jaberi’s family for his release. The post accompanied a picture of a child holding a poster with a hand drawing of handcuffs behind prison bars, and a message “from Oman to the free people of Lebanon” calling for his release from Roumieh Prison where he was alleged to have been held for five and a half years “without charge”, saying he was innocent since he was “young” at the time, which an accompanying message cited as 20. “He wanted to liberate Palestine.”

In a similar case, jihadi websites reported last November that a Saudi-raised Omani Islamist had been killed fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.

Ahmad Ali Salman Al Breiki, a 24-year-old student at Kuwait University, was allegedly a “military official” in the Green Battalion that is said to be linked to the Al Qaida offshoot, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).