The Wall Street Journal reports: Lebanon’s Military Tribunal charged a prominent politician close to Syria and Hezbollah of conspiring to carry out terrorist attacks in Lebanon and plotting to assassinate politicians and religious figures in the country.

The charges are a blow to the image and influence of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and his allies Iran and Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese Shiite political party. They also mark the first time in the 17-month uprising that the Syrian regime has been publicly named in a judicial indictment for inciting violence in another country.

The charges, according to Lebanese state media, named former Lebanese Information Minister Michel Samaha, who is considered a close ally of Syria, Iran and Hezbollah, as well as two Syrians: Chief of the Syrian National Security Bureau Gen. Ali Mamlouk and a Syrian army officer, Brig. Gen. Adnan, whose full name wasn’t stated.

The charges allege that Mr. Samaha, working with Syrian officers, set up an armed group in Lebanon to distribute and plant bombs aimed at inciting sectarian unrest and targeting “the authority of the state and its civil and military institutions,” according to Lebanese state media.