PUERTA DE ORIENTE Rushdie’s aggressor, the (supposed) Lebanese radicalization and the axis with Tehran

Hadi Matar’s parents come from the southern border village of Yaroun, an area controlled by Hezbollah from which they emigrated 30 years ago. The rapprochement with extreme Islam occurred (probably) during a stay in 2018. The American investigation and the implications for the Middle East region. Khamenei recalled that the fatwa against the writer is “solid and irrevocable.”

Beirut () – The attacker of the British writer Salman Rushdie, executed by firing squad in the state of New York on August 13, is of Lebanese origin. But can we say that he would have been radicalized in Lebanon? And on the other hand, would he have acted alone or paid for someone? These are the most important questions being raised at this time in the Land of the Cedars, after it was learned from consistent sources that Hadi Matar and her parents come from the town of Yaroun (Bint Jbeil), on the southern border. The family left the place at least 30 years ago, long before her eldest child was born.

Questioned by Al-Jadid (NTV) broadcaster, Yaroun Municipal Council Chairman Ali Qassem Tahfa pointed out that Hadi Matar “was born and raised in America, but his mother and father, now divorced, come from Yaroun “. Without denying it, the municipal official was evasive and vague about his father’s presence in Lebanon. The director general of security, General Abbas Ibrahim, told the leading French-language daily L’Orient-Le Jour (OLJ) that Hadi Matar “has never set foot in Lebanon.”

However, this statement was indirectly denied by the interested party’s mother, Silvana Fardos, who in an interview with the British Daily Mail revealed that her son was in Lebanon in 2018 to see his father, who had returned to his country of origin. after marriage separation. From being “an affectionate and young son like so many others”, after that visit he became “an introverted and moody person”, added the woman. Upon his return, the newspaper explains, Hadi Matar “began to argue with his mother, whom she reproached for encouraging him to study instead of concentrating on religion.”

From the revelations of Silvana Fardos it is easy to deduce that the radicalization of Hadi Matar took place precisely in Lebanon. Therefore, we can assume that the investigation opened in the United States will sooner or later end up being oriented in the direction of Lebanon. And it is equally clear that, pending an international rogatory in this sense from US justice, General Abbas Ibrahim will deal directly with the matter – a very embarrassing case for Lebanon – and can count on the confidence of the US authorities. In fact, Washington officials have already implicated him several times in the past in some sensitive events, most recently in the case of Austin Tice, an American photographer who disappeared in Damascus in 2012 and is still in the hands of kidnappers whose identity remains unknown. unknown.

Since Yaroun is located in a border district, an area where few things happen without the approval and control of the party of God (Hezbollah), it is very likely that the investigation in Lebanon will collide with the efforts of the American justice system to verify if Hadi Matar really had links with the Pasdaran in Lebanon. Some Iranian media have spoken of contacts with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, such as Vice World News, which reproduces statements from sources consulted under guarantee of anonymity in Europe and the Middle East.

After three days of complete silence, Iran has “categorically” denied in recent hours the slightest involvement in the stab attack in the United States against Salman Rushdie, blaming everything that happened on the author of the “Satanic Verses”. “We strongly deny – Tehran Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said at the weekly conference – any link between the aggressor and Iran” and “nobody has the right to launch accusations against the Islamic Republic”.

In reality, although Hadi Matar is ideologically related to the Islamic Republic, as it seems, nothing suggests for the moment that he has acted on behalf. “Although the international nature of the extremist form of Iranian Islam is evident [chiíta]at the present stage of the investigation we cannot say whether the man acted according to his own convictions, was inspired [por Teherán] or he acted on the orders of Iran,” Ali Fathollah-Nejad, a research associate at the Issam Farès Institute at the American University of Beirut, told OLJ. However, it seems undeniable that part of the responsibility continues to fall on Iran, given that in 2019 Ayatollah Ali Khamenei released a message on Twitter in which he affirmed that the fatwa launched by his predecessor Khamenei against Rushdie remains “solid and irrevocable” .

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