Some sentences handed down by the Military Court fueled the escalation between Sunnis and Shiites. On the part of the Arab tribes an ultimatum came for them to freeze or there will be a new “escalation”. The verdicts concern the arrest of clan members in 2021, after the death of a “party of God” leader.
Beirut () – In Jaldé, the southern gate of Beirut, the fire burns under the ashes. Some thirty members of the Sunni “Arab tribes” in the region were sentenced by the judges of the Military Court, causing serious disturbances. The tribes threatened the government with a new “escalation” and sent an ultimatum of a few days so that, at least, the verdicts are frozen.
The recently handed down sentences affect members of the clan arrested in August 2021 after the assassination of a prominent Hezbollah figure, Ali Chebli, and an ambush that took place in the following days during his funeral, in which three other people died. The attack had been planned to avenge Hassan Ghosn, a teenager from Arab clans who was killed during street clashes with Hezbollah in August 2020 and whose murder went unpunished.
The harshest sentence, handed down by the president of the General Court, Khalil Jaber, corresponds to Omar Ghosn, a sheikh of the Salafist confession considered among the leaders of the faction hostile to Hezbollah in the Khaldé region. The latter must serve a sentence of seven years of forced labor. At the same time, the court handed down nine death sentences in absentia and several other prison sentences.
In protest against the verdict of the military court, they repeatedly blocked the highway of the South that runs through Jaldé, a vital artery for the economy. On the political level, a chorus of voices rose up against the verdict within the parties opposed to Hezbollah, which also promoted a solidarity initiative. For the deputy Ghayath Yazbeck (Lebanese Forces), the sentences handed down “demonstrate once again that the military court is under the control of Hezbollah.” For its part, Walid Joumblatt’s Progressive Socialist Party insisted on the importance of a “reconciliation” policy and demanded that the military court limit itself to judging only and exclusively cases involving members of the army.
Descendants of Sunni Bedouin tribes who settled the coast south of Beirut long before the area developed into the dense suburb it is today, the Khaldé Arabs are part of a broader network that migrated to Lebanon over the centuries and then spread throughout the country. In August 2020, clashes broke out when Hezbollah leader Ali Chebli, in a provocative gesture, hung a giant portrait of Salim Ayyache, one of the alleged assassins of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri (February 14, 2005), on the façade of a shopping center in Jaldé that he owned. The man had been identified and sentenced in absentia by the Special Court for Lebanon (TESL).
Later, Salim Ayache’s portrait was torn down and the mall was set on fire, during clashes with automatic weapons and rocket launchers that followed. And it was during these street battles that Hassan Ghosn, a teenager belonging to an Arab tribe, was targeted and killed.
Approximately a year later, on July 30, 2021, seeing that justice was slow to arrive, the victim’s brother, Ahmad Ghosn, had taken it upon himself to take revenge by shooting Ali Chebli dead during a wedding. In addition, the following day, members of the clan ambushed Ali Chebli’s funeral procession, killing five other people, including three Hezbollah members. To prevent the settling of scores from spreading like wildfire and perpetuating the climate of personal revenge, the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, had resorted to military justice, requesting the arrest of all those involved in what he described as a “slaughter”.
Indeed, the army had very quickly identified the perpetrators of the ambush and arrested them. Following harsh sentences handed down last week, one of the leaders, Sheikh Riad “Abou Zeidan” Daher, summed up that the Arab tribes had been forced to take the law into their own hands. He said that “if (Hezbollah) had handed over Ali Chebli” to the authorities after the murder of the young Hassan Ghosn [durante los enfrentamientos de 2020]the case “would have been resolved”.
