Lebanese court sentences five to death for 2015 Tripoli cafe bombing

BEIRUT — On March 26, the Court of Justice leveled a death sentence against five people in the case of the double suicide attack carried out in January 2015 at a cafe in the Alawite district of Jabal Mohsen, Tripoli. The attack killed nine people and injured around forty others.

The high court, presided over by Judge Souheil Abboud, First President of the Court of Cassation, and comprised of Judges Afif Hakim, Jamal Hajjar, Jean-Marc Oueiss and Maya Majed, sentenced to death five members of the former al-Nosra Front (al-Qaeda's branch in Syria), which claimed responsibility for the double suicide attack, committed to "avenge the Sunnis of Syria and Lebanon," following the 2013 car bomb attacks on two Sunni mosques in Tripoli, al-Taqwa and al-Salam.

Those sentenced to death are Kassem Taljeh, Jamal Zeinieh (Abou Malek al-Talleh), Shadi Mawlawi, Khodr al-Omr, and Mohammad Salloum. Taljeh is the only one convicted who is currently in custody. The other four remain on the run.

Their convictions are based on articles of the Penal Code providing for the death penalty for terrorism and premeditated intentional homicide. According to the investigation, a terrorist cell was set up in Tripoli, under the command of Chadi Maoulaoui. Its members received their orders from Abu Malek al-Talleh, leader of the al-Nosra group in Syria. This organization had carried out attacks against the army in Tripoli, and taken part in clashes between Bab al-Tebbaneh (Sunni) and Jabal Mohsen (Alawite), in Tripoli, in 2011 and 2012.

At the time, Shadi Mawlawi's made a big splash. Arrested in March 2012 after violent fighting between supporters and opponents of Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime in Tripoli, he was later released on bail. After the Jabal Mohsen attack, he went on the run, and various theories sprung up as to his whereabouts. Mawlawi entered the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Helweh, where the Lebanese army and security forces cannot enter and his trail was lost there. At the time, the Ministry of the Interior claimed that he had joined the al-Nosra Front in the Ersal jurd, where he was deployed until 2018, while army circles maintained that he had remained in the camp.

Seven other individuals affiliated with the jihadist organization were also sentenced by the Court of Justice to prison terms ranging from two to 10 years, notably for setting fire to buildings. Only four of them are still in prison.

The double car bomb attack on the Tripoli mosques on August 23, 2013 left over 40 people dead and 500 injured. The two Sunni mosques of al-Taqwa and al-Salam were targeted within minutes of each other during Friday prayers. This attack, carried out two years after the start of the Syrian civil war, had raised fears of a sectarian conflagration in Lebanon between pro- and anti-Assad. In November 2019, eight people implicated in the double attack were sentenced to death by the Court of Justice, an exceptional court that rules on cases affecting state security and whose verdicts are final.