Sudden prisoner releases raise suspicions

[Originally posted at NOW]

Some activists allege clandestine political bargain behind the abrupt release of two anti-Hezbollah Shiite clerics with a pro-Hezbollah businessman.

The unexpected release of three high-profile, Hezbollah-linked Lebanese prisoners in the last few weeks has drawn accusations from some activists of political interference in the judiciary.

The three convicts – businessman Saleh Ezzedine and Shiite clerics Sheikh Hassan Mshaymish and Sayyid Muhammad Ali al-Husseini – had officially been serving time for unrelated crimes: financial fraud in Ezzedine’s case, collaboration with Israel in the others’. Yet all were released almost simultaneously, before the ends of their sentences, with the bail amounts in Mshaymish’s and Ezzedine’s cases both being 5,000,000LL ($3,333). The similarities have led some to argue an under-the-table political agreement forced the judges’ hands.

“Obviously there was a kind of deal, which [stipulated] that all three, coming let’s say from two different parts of the political spectrum, were released,” said Lokman Slim, an activist who has long campaigned for the release of Mshaymish and Husseini, whom he argues were imprisoned on false charges at the behest of Hezbollah, to which the clerics are vocally opposed. NOW was unable to obtain comment, at the time of writing, from the courts responsible for the men’s release.

In Slim’s view, the alleged political deal is a result of broader efforts to calm tensions between the various regional actors that wield influence in Lebanon.

“The timing is interesting […] because at least in the cases of Mshaymish and Husseini, the release could have happened several months ago,” he told NOW. “I think it’s very simple to explain. All of them were ‘caught’ [during] the Saudi-Syrian rupture, or divorce. So now that we’re seeing a new honeymoon between, on the one hand, Hezbollah, and on the other, its opponent. It’s a way to get rid of these files which are no longer useful.”

Moreover, the alleged deal represents a net gain for Hezbollah, Slim argues.

“If the price of releasing Ezzedine is only the release of Mshaymish and Husseini, it’s a cheap price.”

Indeed, Ali al-Amin, another longtime campaigner for Mshaymish’s release, told NOW any political strings that were pulled would have been on Ezzedine’s behalf, rather than the clerics’.

“Ezzedine has people he can reach out to. Mshaymish didn’t even get the smallest of his rights.”

Husseini, for his part, agrees his case was politically motivated from start to finish, though he distanced himself from Mshaymish, whom he accused of striking a bargain with Hezbollah to obtain his release.

“I was arrested because of political issues, and I think I was released for the same reasons as well,” Husseini told NOW. “The investigating judge, Riad Abu Ghaida at the military court, decided to stop the trial because [there was no evidence] I cooperated with Israel.”

Instead, Husseini believes, it was his courting of Iranian opposition groups, including the Mujahidin-e Khalq (MEK) organization banned in Iran, that led to his being framed. Iran is the principal state sponsor of Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

“All I did was create an opposition within the Shiite community […] against wilayat al-faqih [a religious and political ideology shared by Hezbollah and the Iranian state],” said Husseini. “I communicated with Iranian opposition Shiites and the MEK, and that was the [reason]. It is in Iran, not in Lebanon or Israel.”

Another aggravating factor was his opposing Hezbollah’s military intervention in Syria, he claimed.

“I also said that Syrian people have a right to determine their politics regarding Bashar al-Assad and we should not interfere in this,” he told NOW. “These three issues – my dealings with Iranian opposition in general, with the MEK in particular, and what I said about Syria – were the reason behind my detention.”

NOW was unable to reach Mshaymish or Ezzedine, or their lawyers, though Mshaymish’s lawyer has previously told NOW that all charges of collaboration made against his client were based on falsified documents. The charges made against Ezzedine, by contrast, have never been disputed.

While corruption at almost all levels of Lebanese state institutions is a poorly-kept secret, specific allegations such as Slim’s are all but impossible to verify. Lawyer and legal expert Marwan Sakr told NOW he found the claims “far-fetched,” adding that it was not uncommon for judges to request the same bail amounts for separate crimes. But with military court proceedings being secretive by nature, few people besides the judges themselves will ever know the facts with certainty.

Who they are

Sheikh Hassan Mshaymish: A Shiite cleric and former member of Hezbollah until the late 1990s, Mshaymish subsequently became an outspoken critic of the party and its wilayat al-faqih ideology. In 2010, he was arrested in Syria on undisclosed charges, a detention criticized by human rights groups including Amnesty International. He was transferred to Lebanon in 2011 and sentenced in 2013 to five years’ imprisonment for collaboration with Israel. He was released in April 2014 for a bail of 5,000,000LL ($3,333).

Saleh Ezzedine: A once highly-regarded Lebanese businessman on warm terms with Hezbollah, Ezzedine became nicknamed “The Lebanese Madoff” after he was found in 2009 to have defrauded investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars through ostensible investment funds that were, in reality, little more than Ponzi schemes. Among his victims were several senior Hezbollah officials. Detained since 2009, he was released in April 2014 for a bail of 5,000,000LL ($3,333).

Sayyid Muhammad Ali al-Husseini: A Shiite cleric who, like Mshaymish, was once a Hezbollah member and even claims to have been a personal friend of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, Husseini turned against the Party in the mid-2000s. Details of his earlier life are murky, though he was reportedly once jailed in Iran. In 2007, he claimed he was the victim of an assassination attempt at the hands of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Tyre. Then, in 2009, he told NOW he had formed an independent militia, the Arab Islamic Resistance, to rival Hezbollah in fighting Israel. His open courting of the Iranian opposition Mujahidin-e Khalq (MEK) group was, he claimed to NOW, the real reason behind his jailing in 2011 on charges of collaborating with Israel. He was released in 2014.

Myra Abdallah contributed reporting.

In Dahiyeh, fear breeds loathing

[Originally posted at NOW]

Driving through the gridlocked traffic of Beirut’s southern suburbs Tuesday afternoon, two days after a pair of 107mm Grad rockets struck the neighborhood wounding four Syrian workers, not much looked different except perhaps an increase in the number of “martyr” posters. Despite reports of local Hezbollah militants deploying on street corners and setting up checkpoints following the attacks, NOW saw no evidence during a comprehensive tour of the so-called Dahiyeh (“suburb”) – the sole gunman in sight was a plain-clothed security guard outside the Bahman Hospital in Haret Hreik.

However, there was one novel phenomenon detectable in the minds of Dahiyeh residents – suspicion of, and even bigotry against Syrians.

At a red traffic light in Ghobeiry, a young boy around the age of 10 approached the driver’s window trying to sell some goods. “Where are you from?” asked NOW’s guide, Hussein, a forty-something former Amal militant now employed at the Council for the South. “Syria,” replied the boy. “F*** your sister!” grunted Hussein, turning away in disgust.

“They’re dirty people,” he explained as we drove off. “If I could, I would run them all over with my car.”

Dislike for Syrians – which has been on the rise in Dahiyeh ever since the armed conflict began next door – appears to have reached new levels after Sunday’s rockets, widely believed to have been launched by Syrian rebel brigades. According to civil society activist and Dahiyeh resident Lokman Slim, Syrians were subject to various forms of harassment in the hours following the attacks.

“Youngsters took to the streets with their walkie-talkies and accosted those suspected to be Syrian. They checked their phones, checked their IDs, and asked them where they were living,” Slim told NOW.

Hussein said much the same, adding that Hezbollah was keeping a very close watch on Dahiyeh’s Syrian residents, even asking them if they were for or against the Assad regime.

In part, these measures are being undertaken out of fear. Syrian rebel brigades have already launched multiple rocket strikes on pro-Hezbollah areas in the northeastern Beqaa Valley, one of which killed a teenage girl on Monday. The rebels have also repeatedly threatened to extend these strikes to Dahiyeh.

“People support these security measures, because if we’re targeted again, we might die,” said Hussein. “Syrians here are going in and out of Syria all the time. You never know who could be with the opposition.”

Hussein insisted that locals were not spooked by Sunday’s attacks, though he admitted there were quiet worries of something more major to come.

“Two rockets is not a big deal for us, we survived much worse from the Israelis. The feeling in the area is no different today than it was before the rockets. But, of course, if something bigger happens, like car bombs or gunmen in the streets, that’s another matter.”

Security concerns aside, the mounting ill-will against Syrians has evidently taken on a sectarian dimension as well.

“Alawite Syrians are obviously fine. It’s only the Sunnis we have a problem with,” said Abbas, a young resident whose house was just one block from where one of the rockets fell.

This sectarianism, in turn, appears to be fuelled by recent battles in the Syrian town of Qusayr, where Hezbollah has been in open conflict with Syrian rebels, the latter of whom are largely seen in Dahiyeh as Sunni extremists. Indeed, the Qusayr fighting seems to be at the forefront of the community’s attention, dominating café chatter and online discourse. As we drove through Dahiyeh, passing the countless “martyr” photos plastered on lampposts and balconies, Hussein would note each one that was killed in Qusayr.

“There’s no such thing as the Syrian ‘revolutionaries,’ they’re terrorists,” he told NOW. “They have problems in their brains. It’s not Islam, what they think. They behead people with no political agenda, killing and terrorism are their only goals. The fighter who eats the heart of a dead person is not a revolutionary, in Islam we cannot touch the body of a dead person. It’s haram [forbidden].”

The conversation turned distinctly theological when Hussein defended Hezbollah’s fighting in Qusayr.

“A big majority of Shiites think what Hezbollah is doing is a religious duty. It prepares the return of the Mahdi and the signs of his return, and this is the core of Hezbollah’s ideology. So the jihad in Qusayr is a duty.”

Such rhetoric is perhaps illustrative of what Slim described as Hezbollah’s steering of Syria-related events to its own political advantage.

“[The Sunday attacks] led people in Dahiyeh to swing between fear, questioning, and seeking a protector. And, of course, the protector can’t be any other entity but Hezbollah. But [hostility toward Syrians] is not only caused by the shelling of Dahiyeh, it’s caused by [Hezbollah’s] propaganda machine which is focusing on the wrong deeds of some FSA elements.”

In the longer run, when the Syrian war is over, Slim believes, the Shiite community may come to resent the relatively high death toll incurred as a result of the Qusayr fighting. “People are mourning the boys,” he said.

Hussein, indeed, lamented the “mistakes” he said were made by the Party on the military front.

“The fighters being sent to Qusayr are too young, they’re too ill-prepared. The Syrians have dug trenches and are using them well, sniping the Hezbollah fighters first in the legs and then in the head.”

“Hezbollah sent them to war as if it was just a football game.”

Some of the above names have been changed at the interviewees’ requests.

Racha El-Amin and Yara Chehayed contributed reporting.

Hezbollah critic to fight "revenge trial"

[Originally posted at NOW]

After nearly three years of detention by Syrian and Lebanese authorities, a Shiite cleric has been sentenced to five years’ imprisonment on charges of collaboration with Israel – charges that activists and his lawyer say were fabricated in a bid to silence the cleric’s criticism of Hezbollah. The verdict, handed down by the Lebanese Military Tribunal on April 15, is set to be appealed.

Sheikh Hassan Mshaymish was first arrested in Syria in July 2010 on undisclosed charges. The Syrian government’s official silence on his continued detention prompted criticism from Amnesty International, and his family alleges he was tortured during this period. He was transferred to the Lebanese authorities in October 2011, after which he was formally accused of collaboration with Israel, a crime under Article 278 of the Lebanese penal code.

Mshaymish had in fact been a member of Hezbollah until the late 1990s, after which he became an outspoken critic of the party and its ideological adherence to wilayat al-faqih, the authoritarian system of religious government pioneered by the late Iranian Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. As NOW has previously reported, a number of prominent Lebanese Shiite critics of Hezbollah have long maintained that it was these open attacks on the powerful Syrian ally – typically expressed in his monthly publication Difaf (“the riverbanks”) – rather than any dealings with Israel that led to Mshaymish’s arrest.

As is typical of cases handled by the military tribunal, no information pertaining to the trial has officially been made public. However, a legal source involved with the case who requested anonymity due to its sensitivity told NOW the evidence presented by the prosecution chiefly comprised telephone records purporting to show calls made by Mshaymish to Israelis. Mshaymish’s lawyer, Antoine Nehme, alleges these records were falsified, and claims to possess originals proving as much that were ignored by the court.

In addition, the legal source told NOW the prosecution had pointed to a meeting Mshaymish had in Germany in 2005 with an individual whom he suspected of working for “an intelligence apparatus seeking to collect information about Hezbollah.” Mshaymish himself informed Hezbollah of the meeting upon his return to Lebanon. In court, says the source, Nehme argued this meeting failed to violate Lebanese law; first because the man Mshaymish met was German, not Israeli, and second because Article 278 pertains only to divulging information about the Lebanese government, not a party such as Hezbollah.

Adding to these question marks is the comparative lightness of the sentence, which some commentators have interpreted as further evidence of the dubiousness of the charges. (Collaboration with Israel carries a maximum sentence of death.)

“Is it logical that his sentence is only five years for cooperating with the enemy?” asked Ali al-Amin, al-Balad journalist and a fellow Shiite critic of Hezbollah who has campaigned for Mshaymish’s release.

“This trial is political, it’s not based on any evidence. It is a revenge trial, to punish Sheikh Mshaymish for his stand against Hezbollah,” Amin told NOW.

Similar sentiment was expressed by Lokman Slim, another Shiite supporter of Mshaymish who has raised awareness of his case through his “Hayya Bina” NGO.

“For someone collaborating with Israel, five years is not exactly the heaviest sentence he could receive,” Slim told NOW. “So for me the philosophy of such a sentence is that it achieves a moral assassination of Mshaymish. It’s neutralizing and killing the man symbolically, a kind of murder without blood.”

Looking ahead, Mshaymish still has a chance of clearing his name with a successful appeal. The legal source told NOW that Nehme, the defense lawyer, is confident of overturning the verdict.

Yet Slim told NOW the appeal, even if successful, would likely take a long time, adding to the two years and nine months of detention Mshaymish has already undergone.

“The appeal could take years. Given he’s already served nearly three years in prison, he could end up serving the full five years with his appeal still in process.”

Yara Chehayed contributed reporting.

Safe and sound? What ending the Moqdad affair means for Lebanon and the region

[Originally posted at NOW Lebanon]

The images of freed Turkish abductee Aydin Tufan Tekin reuniting with his family on Turkish soil Wednesday morning offered a happy ending to a month-long drama that pitted the Lebanese state against an obscure tribal militia.

Along with 20 Syrian nationals, Tekin was kidnapped in mid-August by the so-called “military wing” of the Moqdads, a Shiite clan based in Beirut’s southern suburbs, also known as “Dahiyeh”. His release was secured on Tuesday night following a series of raids on Moqdad locations by the Lebanese army on Tuesday and Friday. Despite claims by the Moqdads on Tuesday that Tekin was in critical condition after being shot in the chest and shoulder, he appeared unharmed on Wednesday and indeed said he had heard no gunfire during Tuesday’s raid. The Syrian captives were also freed.

The apparent assertion of state authority over turf ordinarily considered a stronghold of Hezbollah raises the question of whether a fundamental shift in the country’s balance of powers is underway. Some Lebanese seem to think so – “Weather is changing on our Republic,” tweeted the Tajaddod Youth party account on Saturday. Others were more cynical. “Am I supposed to believe we suddenly have a state? Give me a break,” wrote the author of the Lebanon Spring blog.

The latter sentiment was echoed by the activist and Dahiyeh resident Lokman Slim, who told NOW Lebanon that, “As an eyewitness from Haret Hreik, when the army arrived with their tanks and Humvees it was for me all a kind of show. They couldn’t have done this without a certain understanding with Hezbollah. In general, all this enthusiasm shown by the army, whether in the Dahiyeh or in Naame where they arrested some people for inciting sectarian tension, is part of a big staging that does not guarantee the security of the country.”

On the other hand, retired Lebanese Army General Elias Hanna commended the army’s action, arguing that it was in the interests of both the state and Hezbollah to see the Moqdad issue resolved. “There are three factions within the Shiites: Hezbollah, Amal and the tribes,” he told NOW. “These tribes are usually out of Hezbollah’s control, and we have witnessed a lot of skirmishes between these factions in the past. Now what happened with the Moqdads was hurting Lebanon, hurting Hezbollah and hurting Amal. Moreover, they are like competitors, so I think that the army took a prior ‘OK’ from Hezbollah as well as maybe practical intelligence about these people’s whereabouts.”

Asked about other ostensible assertions of state authority, such as the arrest of former minister and close Syria ally Michel Samaha, as well as three Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) members, Hanna again said that acute disorder was in no one’s interest. “All the factions in Lebanon are trying to impose a certain level of stability. You can allow a certain degree of instability but only to the point where it doesn’t threaten or endanger the situation. What happened with Samaha was irrefutable. Nobody can say that ‘We are with Samaha.’ Everybody is embarrassed, including pro-Syrian elements. After all, he confessed what he did! So this explains the aggressiveness of the president concerning the sovereignty of Lebanon and so on,” referring to President Sleiman’s unprecedented stances vis-à-vis the Moqdads and on other issues.

Slim, however, is again unconvinced. “These are all part of the same logic. The Moqdad situation, the Makdissi Street situation [with the SSNP members], and the robbing of Samaha by his allies all belong in the same category. Nobody is stupid enough to believe the army can storm the Dahiyeh but cannot do the same in other regions of Lebanon. For the army to prove its seriousness, it has to be able to do the same everywhere, otherwise it is just either a passive observer or an accomplice.”

Lebanese considerations aside, at the international level, Tekin’s ordeal may have consequences for Turkey’s policy on Syria. According to Oytun Orhan, Middle East expert at the Ankara-based ORSAM think tank, the kidnapping led to widespread domestic condemnation of the Turkish government’s support for the Syrian opposition. “There was a lot of criticism within Turkish society because if you deal with the Syrian issue in this way – if you interfere in Syrian affairs, and arm and give safe haven to the Free Syrian Army in Hatay – then you will have these kind of negative implications in the region. Many Turks saw Tekin’s kidnapping as a natural result of our Syria policy,” he told NOW.

Orhan added that Lebanese-Turkish relations were never threatened by the Moqdad affair. “Turkey knew that this was something outside the control of the Lebanese government. Nobody considered this a factor which could deteriorate Turkish-Lebanese relations.”

“But, of course, solving the issue was beneficial for those.”

Resisting history

[Originally posted at NOW Lebanon. Below I've restored my inverted commas around the word 'resistance' that the editors removed]

Those who do not learn from history, it is commonly said, are condemned to repeat it. By this measure, the prospects would seem bleak for Lebanon, where an ever-compounding political entanglement continues to deny schoolchildren so much as the option of learning about anything that has occurred in their country since the first half of the twentieth century.

Last month, Culture Minister Gaby Layoun was widely reproached for remarking that “There is nothing called the ‘Cedar Revolution.’” Now, the latest dispute concerns the decision to dedicate one hour per week to studying what a new draft syllabus calls “Lebanon’s resistance against Israel and its plans.” According to a copy of the document obtained by NOW Lebanon, students would be taught about “the Israeli strategic [ambitions] toward the elimination of the Lebanese stain, the Israeli ambitions in both land and waters [and] the resistance’s importance in terms of defending Lebanon.”

On Tuesday, Kataeb MP Sami Gemayel became the latest politician to reject the new syllabus, calling it “unacceptable.”

Elsewhere, in recent months the proposed syllabus has attracted criticism from almost all corners of the political landscape, from the Lebanese Forces and the Progressive Socialist Party to the Free Patriotic Movement and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. 

Opposition to this proposal has taken several forms. First, there are those, such as Gemayel, who decry what they see as a distortion of history in the omission of any reference to 'resistance' against non-Lebanese forces other than Israelis. While declaring that 'resistance' to Israel was “important,” he went on to say, “There are Lebanese who resisted the armed Palestinian presence in the country and the Syrian occupation – why are they left out?”

“Mentioning [only] one resistance,” he added, “disregards the causes of a wide range of Lebanese who took part in their own struggles and shielded Lebanon from potentially dramatic consequences.” Similarly, FPM leader Michael Aoun said Tuesday that, “the current history book that is being assessed by government is not suitable for schools… No one can eliminate a single historical development.” As army commander, General Aoun waged an ill-fated “war of liberation” against the Syrian occupation from 1989 to 1990. 

Then there are those who believe the syllabus will overlook the contributions of other 'resistance' movements against Israel. NOW Lebanon spoke to Democratic Left Movement MP Elias Atallah, who co-founded the secular Lebanese National Resistance Front (LNRF) that, he claims, staged its first attack on Israeli forces in Beirut just two days after the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacres. “The Islamic resistance was established at a later phase. Seventy percent of Lebanese territory was liberated before Hezbollah existed at all.”

“Ever since its establishment on September 16, 1982, the LNRF was the base of resistance. We had hundreds of martyrs, and a big part of Lebanon was liberated by the LNRF. At the time, the Syrians and their proxies in Lebanon tried to eliminate us by assassinations, similar to those that accompanied the Independence Intifada [of 2005], and now they’re trying to erase us again by fabricating history. It’s true that Hezbollah was part of the resistance, but their role was relatively minor.”

There are also those who argue that the question of 'resistance' cannot be addressed in isolation, and must instead be incorporated into a comprehensive history of the civil war in its entirety. Lebanese University historian Issam Khalife told NOW Lebanon that “There has to be a scientific approach. One cannot look at only one resistance; one has to look at them all in general. Moreover, one has to examine the wider history of the war – the causes, the human cost, the economic cost and the conclusions.”

Finally, there are those who dismiss the entire 'resistance' debate altogether. Lokman Slim, the publisher and activist whose projects include the UMAM Documentation and Research NGO established in part to archive materials from the civil war, told NOW Lebanon the recent controversy was “ridiculous.”

“From whomever it comes, whether it be Hezbollah or the other kid, Sami Gemayel--who wants to revive the memory of the quote-unquote ‘Christian resistance’--or the people in South Lebanon who collaborated with Israel and are now criticizing Gemayel because he disregarded them, or the Communists who will also claim their ten minutes of ‘resistance,’ I think that it’s all just part of our deadlock that proves we are the hostages of an outdated mentality.

"They are fighting a micro-domestic civil war, for the simple reason that they cannot fight larger wars or be part of larger issues,” said Slim.

The timing, Slim added, was conspicuous: “Putting forward this history issue [now] is a sign of big cowardice. They are not facing the right issues: first of all what’s happening domestically with the government of Hezbollah, second of all what’s happening in Syria. So they are avoiding all this and focusing on an inoffensive diversion tactic.”

Whatever the case, it looks as though today’s Lebanese schoolchildren are no closer to being taught their modern history than their parents were.

Luna Safwan and Aline Sara contributed reporting for this article.