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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Syria's man wins Lebanon byelection

2007-08-06

LEBANON'S Syrian-backed opposition won a key byelection that left the country's Christians deeply divided ahead of polls to elect a new president, who is traditionally a Christian. Camille Khoury, a candidate backed by Christian leader Michel Aoun and allied with Hezbollah, narrowly beat anti-Damascus former president Amin Gemayel on Sunday. Mr Khoury won 39,534 votes, against 39,116 votes for Mr Gemayel, whose representative has lodged a "complaint on the results", Interior Minister Hassan Sabeh said, without giving more details. Mr Gemayel, a prominent leader of the Western-backed ruling majority, had been vying to replace his son Pierre Gemayel, killed last November in one of a series of attacks blamed by the majority on Syria. Damascus has rejected the accusations. Mr Sabeh earlier told reporters that the ruling majority candidate, Mohamad Amin Itani, had won a landslide victory in another byelection that was also held on Sunday in Beirut. The byelections were held to replace two anti-Syrian MPs killed in attacks blamed by the Western-backed majority on Damascus, which supports the Hezbollah-led opposition. Industry Minister Pierre Gemayel, a Christian, was gunned down in Beirut on November 21 last year, and Sunni Walid Eido was killed in a car bombing in the capital on June 13. After the end of the byelections, the two camps immediately called for self-restraint, as hundreds of supporters from both sides gathered in public squares amid a heavy deployment of army and security forces backed by armoured vehicles. Mr Aoun announced Mr Khoury's victory over Mr Gemayel in a televised speech, and appealed for calm. But Mr Gemayel refused to admit defeat until official results were announced and demanded a rerun of the vote in one mainly Armenian region, where he claimed voter fraud.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

PLO acts to contain Islamists in Lebanon camp

2007-04-15

The Palestine Liberation Organisation has adopted measures to “isolate” Fatah al-Islam, an Islamist grouping blamed for deadly bombings in Lebanon, the PLO representative in Beirut said. “We are attempting to isolate Fatah al-Islam because we do not want the Palestinians to be perceived as an element of instability in Lebanon,” Abbas Ziki told AFP in an interview on Friday. Last month, Lebanese Interior Minister Hassan Sabeh said detained members of Fatah al-Islam had admitted carrying out bus bombings in a mountain village on February 13 that killed three people. But Fatah al-Islam, a small grouping which first came to be known last November and which is based in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared in northern Lebanon, has denied any involvement in the attacks, Ziki said Lebanese authorities were holding 15 members of the Islamist grouping over the bus attacks. Outlining the steps being taken, Ziki said the PLO military and political factions were determined to contain Fatah al-Islam, although without resorting to violence. “We have named a new military command, created a joint intervention force and released funds,” said Ziki.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Al-Qaeda trying to muscle into Lebanon over the last few months

2006-02-12

Lebanese Interior Minister Ahmed Fatfat said al-Qaeda terror organization has been trying to settle in Lebanon for the last few months. On Saturday, Fatfat told the French paper, Liberation, that they are aware of the Qaeda efforts in this direction; the network infiltrates its fighters or it collects its supporters inside the country. Appointed in replacement of Hassan Sabeh, who was the former youth minister but resigned last week due to the cartoon protests in the capital Beirut, Fatfat said, "A short while ago, we collapsed the two groups suspected for affiliation with al-Qaeda network." Lebanese minister also informed about the arrests of 13 people from different Middle Eastern countries planning to attack Lebanon. And five more, who attacked the military positions, were also detained, he added. The judicial sources reported on the Syrian, Lebanese, Saudi Arabian, Jordanian, and Palestinian citizens among the arrested a month ago.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Qaeda seeking Beirut base: report

2006-02-11

AL-QAEDA has been seeking for several months to "establish itself" in Lebanon, the country's new interior minister has told a French newspaper. "We know that for four or five months al-Qaeda has been trying to establish a presence in Lebanon," Ahmad Fatfat told Liberation in an interview published today. Mr Fatfat replaced Hassan Sabeh, who resigned after violent anti-Danish protests in Beirut prompted by publication of 12 cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper. "The organisation is infiltrating its fighters and recruiting locally. The soil is fertile," he said. "We recently dismantled two groups suspected of belonging to this network." He said that "13 individuals from different Middle East countries" were arrested "a month ago" and were "preparing attacks" in Lebanon. Last month a legal source said seven Syrians, three Lebanese, a Jordanian, a Palestinian and a Saudi were facing prosecution in a military court. "We have also detained five people involved in attacks on military positions," Fatfat said, without giving further details. Asked about rocket attacks on Israel in December for which al-Qaeda's chief in Iraq, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, has claimed responsibility, Mr Fatfat said the information available to him led him to believe al-Qaeda was reponsible. But, he said: "We have elements suggesting that it was men from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PLFP-GC) who carried (the attacks) out."

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Cartoon riots: Leb interior minister quits

2006-02-06

Lebanon's Interior Minister Hassan Sabeh has announced his resignation after a mob attacked the Danish consulate in Beirut in riots sparked by controversial Prophet Muhammed cartoons. Almost 30 people were injured as furious crowds on Sunday stormed and set ablaze the building housing the Danish consulate, despite the presence of riot police who had initially used tear gas and batons to keep protesters at bay. "I submitted my resignation to the government after criticisms were raised," Sabeh said after an extraordinary cabinet meeting. He said he had refused to give security forces the order to fire on the protesters because "I did not want to be responsible for any carnage. "Despite the intervention of more than 1000 members of the security forces, we were unable to impose order because of the determination of the protesters, who numbered several thousands." "I'm outta here. These people are crazy."

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Sunni Clerics Condemn Attack on Lebanese Christians

2006-02-05

Lebanese demonstrators have set the Danish embassy in Beirut on fire in protest at the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Thousands of people attended a rally and clashes broke out with security forces sent to protect the building. Lebanese leaders condemned the attack and Interior Minister Hassan Sabeh announced his resignation. The violence came a day after mobs in neighbouring Syria torched the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus. Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller has called for a calming of tensions. "It is a critical situation and it is very serious," he told Danish public radio. Denmark urged its citizens to leave Lebanon as soon as possible. The cartoons first appeared in a Danish newspaper in September and caused outrage among Muslims, who consider any images of Muhammad offensive. One of the cartoons shows Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban. Newspapers across Europe have republished the pictures in recent days, saying they are defending freedom of expression. Huge crowds attended Sunday's protest in the Christian neighbourhood where the Danish embassy is located. The protest started out peacefully, but turned violent after Islamic extremists tried to break though security barriers protecting the building. "We have a right to defend our prophet," one protester told the BBC. "They should have respected our religion," said another. Some 2,000 riot police and army troops fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowd and fired their weapons into the air. But smoke was later seen rising from the building, which also houses commercial offices, after demonstrators broke into it. The building was believed to be unoccupied at the time. Some protesters threw stones at the security forces and burned Danish flags. A nearby church and other property in the neighbourhood were also attacked. Security officials said at least 18 people were injured, AP news agency reported. Some Muslim clerics helped to persuade the crowd to disperse as the violence died down, the BBC's Jim Muir reports from the scene. Lebanon's most prominent Sunni leader, Saad al-Hariri, vowed to track down and prosecute those involved in the attacks. "We tell our Christian brothers that any stone thrown against a house or a car was an insult to Muslims," he said from Paris.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Gov't vows to tackle 'terror' after TV anchor targeted

2005-09-27

Lebanon vowed Monday to confront the wave of attacks against anti-Syrian figures after a top woman television anchor was targeted in a car bombing, adding to a climate of fear in the country. May Shidyaq, 40, a Christian news presenter and political talk show host on LBC television, was maimed when a bomb planted in her car blew up on the northern outskirts of Beirut on Sunday. It was the 13th in a wave of bombings unleashed in February, when Lebanon's billionaire former prime minister Rafiq Hariri was assassinated in a huge bomb blast on the Beirut seafront. "It is a terrorist plot ... and the state is doing everything it can" to tackle the attacks, Interior Minister Hassan Sabeh told reporters after Prime Minister Fuad Siniora met with security chiefs. Maybe they should try hiring some German investigators to hunt them down? The Lebs don't seem to be up to the job. "I have drawn up together with the defence minister a plan to exchange information among the different security services to foil terrorist acts at the stage of preparation," he said. But the interior minister warned: "We should expect more attacks like this." That means they're not going to hire any German investigators. Pity. Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh, who himself survived an assassination bid a year ago, pointed the finger of blame at Syria, Lebanon's intelligence services and its pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud. "It was the same people as the ones who tried to kill me," the Druze minister said, accusing "Damascus, Baabda (site of the presidential palace) and the intelligence services." Y'think? Saaaaaay! Maybe that's why they haven't caught them... The unsolved attacks have instilled fear among many critics of former power-broker Syria, with a number of anti-Damascus figures such as Hariri's MP son Saad Hariri spending much of their time out of the country. "These attacks are aimed at terrorising the Lebanese while the inquiry into the murder of Rafiq Hariri is going on," Siniora said on Sunday after visiting Shidyaq in hospital.

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Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Lebanon Sets May Polls After Syrian Departure

2005-04-28

Lebanon's new government, bolstered by a strong vote of confidence in Parliament yesterday, just a day after the last Syrian soldier left the country, said parliamentary elections would be held next month. Many people hope the end of Syria's 29-year military domination signals a new era for Lebanon which still bears the scars of its devastating civil war, but doubts linger over whether Damascus has truly relinquished control. Interior Minister Hassan Sabeh signed a decree for legislative polls to be held on four consecutive Sundays between May 29 and June 19, shortly after new Prime Minister Najib Mikati handily won a confidence vote. The staging of elections on time was a key demand of the Lebanese opposition and the international community which had piled pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime to pull the troops out. On Tuesday, Lebanese danced in the streets and Syrians waved national flags as the last troops crossed the border home. "We have turned a shameful page in the history of Lebanon and for the first time in 30 years, we can talk freely," opposition MP Butros Harb said.

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