BEIRUT: Lebanon’s army said Saturday it had taken into custody a suspect in last year’s killing of a Christian political official, with help from Syria’s new authorities, in a case that sparked public outrage.

Pascal Sleiman, a coordinator in the Byblos (Jbeil) area north of Beirut for the Lebanese Forces (LF) Christian party, was abducted and killed in April 2024.

The army had said he was killed in a carjacking by Syrian gang members who then took his body across the border.

The army received “one of the main individuals involved in the crime of kidnapping and killing” Sleiman after coordinating with Syrian authorities, a military statement said.

The suspect “heads a gang involved in kidnapping, robbery and forgery and has a large number of arrest warrants against him,” the statement said, adding that investigations were underway.

Sleiman’s LF party opposed Syria’s longtime ruler Bashar Assad, who was ousted in December, as well as its Lebanese ally Hezbollah, which last year was engaged in cross-border fire with Israel that escalated into all-out war.

Beirut and Damascus have been seeking to improve ties since the overthrow of Assad, whose family dynasty for decades exercised control over Lebanese affairs.

Anti-Syrian sentiment soared after Sleiman’s disappearance and death, in a country hosting hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees.

Some accused Hezbollah of having a hand in the killing, but then chief Hassan Nasrallah, who was later killed in a massive Israeli air strike, denied his party was involved.

The LF had said it would consider Sleiman’s death a “political assassination until proven otherwise.”