Two complaints filed against former MP Nawaf Moussawi

Two complaints were filed Tuesday against former Hezbollah MP Nawaf Moussawi, concerning a recent statement in which he issued threats against any future president who was not endorsed by his party.

"He will never be able to reach [Baabda]. And assuming that he succeeds in being elected, this president will not live," stated Moussawi during an interview Friday with the Hezbollah channel, al-Manar.

To drive the point home, this former member of Hezbollah's political bureau recalled the assassination of president-elect Bashir Gemayel in 1982, at the hands of Habib Shartouni, a former member of the Syrian National Social Party (SSNP). An act that Moussawi even described as a "national duty."

The first complaint against the former MP was presented by the leader of the Change Party, Elie Mahfoud, at the courthouse. Mahfoud considered that these words "are clear and direct threats against any presidential candidate not covered by Hezbollah."

Another complaint was presented by lawyer Majd Harb, a former candidate in the parliamentary elections. Harb based his complaint on the accusations of "incitement to murder and discord, attacks on national unity, as well as defamation against an elected president [Bashir Gemayel]."

Harb said that Moussawi "promotes ideas that are foreign to the local culture," recalling that he sought to trivialize his accusations against a section of the population hostile to Hezbollah by calling them "the Zionist right from within."

The lawyer noted that "such remarks are penalized by the penal code," hence the complaint.

Moussawi, who was a member of parliament for Sour and a member of Hezbollah's political bureau, submitted his resignation in July 2019 "at the request of his party" for "an accumulation of errors committed." Moussawi found himself a few days earlier at the center of a controversy after an exchange of fire in a police station in south Lebanon.

This article originally appeared in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.