An officer stands guard outside the Beirut Justice Palace. (Credit: Anwar Amro/AFP)
Military police arrested comedian Nour Hajjar yesterday over a recent joke he made at the expense of the Lebanese Army, according to Hajjar’s lawyer. Media freedom advocate Jad Shahrour said Hajjar was taken into custody “illegally” after military police transported him, without informing his lawyer, to the Beirut Justice Palace for an interrogation with top prosecutor Ghassan Oueidat. Hajjar initially visited the Rihanniyeh military police headquarters to sign a bail bond following an 11-hour interrogation last week. Hajjar was ultimately released Tuesday evening to cheers from a crowd that had formed outside Beirut’s Justice Palace.
The owner and an employee of the shuttered Garderêve daycare center in Jdeideh were charged with attempted murder and complicity yesterday. The two suspects have been in custody since their arrest in July, when the daycare was closed after a video circulating on social media showed child abuse within the facility. Mount Lebanon Judge Rania Yahfoufi affirmed that the daycare center employee allegedly committing child abuse in the video “could not deny what she was accused of, while attributing her actions to a mental disorder, and was in charge of 20 children.” Yahfoufi refused the request to appoint a forensic doctor to examine the suspect’s mental health.
Libyan militants released 15 more people who were captured earlier this month during an irregular sea migration attempt that departed from Lebanon, lawyer Mohammad Sablouh told L’Orient Today. Sablouh added that 15 of the 110 captured migrants — seven children, 14 women, and 59 men — remain in “Libyan jails,” some of whom “are accused of being the boat captains and leading the journey” intercepted by the Libyan Tarek Ben Ziyad militia (TBZ) on Aug. 18. “None of the authorities — Lebanese, Syrian or Palestinian — have requested the repatriation of the migrants,” added Sablouh. The Lebanese Foreign Ministry said it would refuse entry to non-Lebanese people who attempted to irregularly migrate from Lebanon.
Caretaker Minister for Displaced Persons Issam Charafeddine announced potential measures sanctioning people who host illegal entrants to Lebanon, amid repeated army reports of hundreds of illegal entrants to the country from Syria. The army said it prevented 850 illegal entries from Syria to Lebanon last week, and 700 the week before. Human Rights Watch estimates that Lebanese authorities deported 1,800 Syrian refugees between April and July while rights groups warned that Syria remains unsafe for repatriation. Amid rising anti-displaced Syrian rhetoric from officials and increasingly aggressive policing, Lebanese authorities announced that Syrian refugees in Lebanon who return to Syria would lose refugee status.
The Beirut Indictment Chamber withdrew itself from the corruption investigation into former Banque du Liban governor Riad Salameh after his lawyer appealed against the chamber judges assigned to the case, a judicial source told L’Orient Today. Salameh skipped a second hearing with the indictment chamber after again failing to be notified of the interrogation. The appeals of state liability filed by Salameh’s lawyer against the assigned indictment chamber judges and registered by the Court of Cassation suspended the case. The indictment chamber withdrew itself in the wake of the complaints, which cannot be adjudicated due to the loss of quorum at the plenary assembly of the Court of Cassation. “State liability actions, appeals on grounds of legitimate suspicion and the like are, unfortunately, often used to obstruct the course of justice and investigations,” asserted Paul Morcos, director of the Justicia law firm, referencing the 20-month paralysis of the investigation into the Beirut port explosion. Salameh routinely denies claims of wrongdoing as he faces local and international investigations into alleged embezzlement of state funds.
A sewer overflowed into the Tabarja, Kesrouan coastline yesterday, witnesses confirmed to L’Orient Today. Head of the Civil Defense rescue units Samir Yazbeck linked the incident to Monday’s heavy rainfall, which caused a sewage system clogged with solid waste to overflow. Photos sent to L’Orient Today by a resident of a hotel near the coastline showed a large patch of pollution in the water. “When the emergency services went to the scene on [yesterday] morning, they found no [visible trace of sewage] in the sea,” Yazbeck said.
Financial Prosecutor Ali Ibrahim questioned the director of KVA in an investigation into the three-firm consortium’s alleged forgery and negligence as a service provider for Electricité du Liban, a senior judicial source told L’Orient Today. KVA director, Mohammad K., said he would provide documents falsifying the meter tampering and dereliction of duty charges that led to his arrest and the arrest of the KVA collection manager last Thursday. The KVA officials were released Monday, while the consortium’s headquarters have been sealed since Thursday.
In case you missed it, here’s our must-read story from yesterday: “Regen-R8, the company using solar power to help farmers”
Compiled by Abbas Mahfouz
Humanitarian convoy reaches Rmeish, Ain Ibl, Dibil despite obstacles