Sheikh Husseini accuses Hezbollah of burning down his house

Shiite Sheikh Mohammad Ali Husseini, known for his fierce opposition to Hezbollah, accused the Shiite party of burning down his home in Lebanon. “We thank the Hezbollah command for its great culture, its sense of morality and its civilized behavior in setting fire to our second house in our village,” he wrote on his X account, accompanying the message with images of a burnt-out house.

According to our Bekaa correspondent Sarah Abdallah, this home is located in Shmustar, near Baalbeck.

Sheikh Husseini did not specify which village he was referring to. According to his biography, he was born in Ghobeiri, a district in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

This sheikh became known to the Lebanese public for his frequent appearances on the pan-Arab Al-Arabiya channel during the last war with Israel, during which he systematically criticized Hezbollah and predicted the assassination of its leader Hassan Nasrallah a few days before the fact, on Sept. 27, 2024.

The current Secretary General of the Islamic Council in Lebanon has long been affiliated with Hezbollah, of which he is even a founding member. But he fell out strongly with the party's leadership, and was even imprisoned in Lebanon for “intelligence with the enemy,” a charge he has always rejected. He currently resides in Saudi Arabia, a country which has granted him its nationality.

His thunderous outbursts against the Shiite party have undoubtedly earned him many enemies in Lebanon. On Nov. 30, a judicial source confirmed to L'Orient-Le Jour that public prosecutor Jamal Hajjar had issued a search warrant for Sheikh Husseini on the basis of several complaints lodged by lawyers accusing him of “collaboration with the Israeli enemy” and “incitement to murder.”