Caretaker cabinet discussions, slain UNIFIL soldier honored, mufti elections: Everything you need to know to start your Monday

Four of the caretaker cabinet’s 24 ministers are scheduled to meet today for follow-up discussions on a “viable mechanism” to continue managing affairs after an earlier government meeting caused controversy. These four ministers are Bassam Mawlawi (interior), Abbas Halabi (education), Henri Khoury (justice) and Mohammad Mortada (culture). Twenty of the caretaker cabinet’s 24 ministers held an informal meeting on Friday to discuss how the government will hold future meetings. Free Patriotic Movement-affiliated ministers attended the meeting, a ministerial source told L’Orient Today, after they had boycotted a Dec. 5 meeting considering it beyond the caretaker cabinet’s prerogatives. The cabinet had met to approve financing for state-insured dialysis and cancer treatments, assistance for the army and other “urgent” items. The four absent ministers were Saade Chami, deputy caretaker prime minister; Youssef Khalil, caretaker finance minister; Firass Abiad, caretaker health minister; and Najla Riachi, caretaker minister of state for administrative reform, the same source said.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) and the Lebanese Army organized a farewell ceremony for peacekeeper Sean Rooney, who was killed on Wednesday during an “incident” in South Lebanon, ahead of his repatriation to Ireland where a military funeral will be held. A UNIFIL convoy transported Rooney’s remains from a hospital in Saida, South Lebanon to the Beirut International Airport. The convoy of peacekeepers came under small arms fire in the South Lebanon village of al-Aaqbiya on Wednesday night, killing Rooney and wounding three other soldiers after the vehicle hit a pylon. Irish Foreign and Defense Minister Simon Coveney said on Thursday that there would be three investigations into the incident: one by Ireland, another by the UN and a third by Lebanon.

A US court overturned a federal district court's decision that said Beirut courts had “exclusive jurisdiction” to try cases against Lebanese banks. A US court of appeals allowed the Raad family to proceed with a case brought in December 2020 against Bank Audi after the financial institution refused to transfer their funds abroad at the onset of Lebanon’s ongoing economic crisis in 2019. Lebanese banks implemented informal banking restrictions in 2019, severely curtailing depositors’ access to their foreign currency funds. While one of the family’s attorneys claimed the decision would pave the way for future cases against Lebanese banks from disgruntled depositors, Bank Audi’s lawyer said the ruling is “non-precedential.” The bank’s legal defense claimed to have “several other threshold grounds for dismissal” with which they will pursue the case. Some depositors have previously regained access to funds frozen in Lebanese banks through overseas courts in France and Britain. Meanwhile, the financial crisis in Lebanon persists unabated, with the national currency trading over the weekend at more than LL44,000 to the US dollar on the parallel market.

Dar al-Fatwa, the highest Sunni religious authority in Lebanon, on Sunday held the first regional mufti elections in 40 years to appoint six dignitaries to the religious body. For the past 40 years, muftis were appointed by the mufti of the republic, currently Abdel-Latif Derian; however, a Dar al-Fatwa source told L’Orient Today that this year the conditions for holding the vote were “right.” Suffrage in the mufti elections is granted to personalities considered to be part of the political and religious elite of the Sunni community, including the incumbent prime minister, former prime ministers, members of the Supreme Islamic Council, Sunni legal judges and Sunni first class civil servants. The voters elected the new regional religious authorities: Sheikh Mohammad Tarek Imam (Tripoli), Sheikh Zaïd Mohammad Bakkar Zakaria (Akkar), Sheikh Ali Ghazzaoui (Zahle), Sheikh Wafic Hijazi (Rashaya), Sheikh Ayman Rifai (Baalbeck-Hermel) and Sheikh Hassan Dalleh (Hasbaya-Marjayoun).

The court of cassation rejected an appeal by Tariq Houshieh against his conviction for the 2017 rape and murder of a British woman in Lebanon. The Lebanese judiciary sentenced Houshieh, an Uber driver, to death in 2019 after his confession to raping and murdering 30-year-old Rebecca Dykes in 2017. "We hope this verdict will bring some closure for Becky's family, for the many around the world who loved Becky and for all those whose lives she touched through her humanitarian work in Lebanon and elsewhere," the British Embassy said after the ruling.

In case you missed it, here's our must-read story from over the weekend: “2022 World Cup reignites Lebanon’s gambling scene— legal and illegal”

Compiled by Abbas Mahfouz