| See also here for the activities of the folks who stayed behind. |
| “Curly-toed slippers, don’t fail me now!” |
Al-Ouf’s lawyer Sakher al-Hashem said the suspended director has "arrived in the United States, and will not return to
...In 2020 Hezbollah blew up a considerable portion of Beirut and many of its inhabitants when its ammonium nitrate facility exploded. They blamed it on... somebody else. It wasn't them though. Trust them on that. And it ain't never coming to trial...
A judicial official said that the United States had lobbied for his release.
Al-Ouf traveled despite the fact that Oueidat had slapped travel bans on all the released detainees. Some media reports meanwhile said that al-Ouf left the country before the issuance of the travel bans.
Nizar Zakka, President of the U.S.-based Hostage Aid Worldwide, tweeted that al-Ouf has been "freed from unlawful detention in Lebanon for more than 2 years."
He "will finally be reunited with his family!", Zakka added, thanking U.S. Special Presidential Envoy Roger Carstens, the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Hostage Aid Worldwide and "everyone who helped" secure al-Ouf’s release.
Speaking to al-Jadeed TV, Zakka said al-Ouf traveled to carry out medical checkups in the United States and will return to Lebanon.
"He didn’t want to travel. He wanted to stay (in Lebanon) but he was pressured to go do his medical checkups," Zakka added, clarifying that the checkups were requested by the U.S. government seeing as this is the routine procedure for those freed from "arbitrary detention."
Asked about the travel ban issued by Oueidat, Zakka said he did not know about such an order and that al-Ouf "traveled normally" through Beirut’s airport.