Lebanon executed three convicted murderers at dawn yesterday, ending a 5-year hiatus on applying the death penalty, despite protests by the EU and human rights groups.
All three men were executed in the courtyard of the Roumieh prison, the country's main penitentiary in a northern suburb of Beirut. Journalists were barred.
Ahmed Mansour was hanged for the July 2002 killing of eight of his colleagues in a shooting spree at a government building. Remy Zaatar, who killed three army intelligence personnel in July 2002, and Badieh Hamadeh, who killed two civil defense colleagues in June 2002, were shot by firing squad.
Security officials said the men's families were permitted to spend half an hour with them on Friday night, but were not allowed to witness their executions. Clergymen for the three men, a Christian, a Shiite and a Sunni Muslim, were allowed to see them before their deaths, as well as a judge to take down their will.
Hamadeh and Zaatar refused to be blindfolded, the officials added, speaking on condition of anonymity. Hamadeh, an Islamic fundamentalist, said he was unrepentant, claiming he committed the murders in self defense.
Afterward, the bodies were taken to a government hospital on the outskirts of Beirut for their families to collect them.
While capital punishment is common in the Middle East, Lebanon went through a five-year break in executions because former Prime Minister Salim Hoss had refused to sign the death orders during his time in office, saying capital punishment was contrary to his convictions. Officials said the three executed yesterday were picked from a list of 27 on death row because of the nature of their crimes.
The executions were criticized by the EU and human rights groups, which on Friday appealed to President Emile Lahoud to halt the executions. Lahoud is in the final year of his six-year term.
The EU Presidency on Friday expressed "dismay" at the Lebanese decision and urged Lahoud to use his authority to reverse the decision.
The local Future TV station yesterday quoted French Foreign Ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous as saying that the executions violated a commitment the Lebanese government made when it signed the partnership agreement with the EU in 2002.
Amnesty International urged the Lahoud to halt the executions. Local human rights groups also condemned the executions, staging sit-ins outside the prison and the parliament in downtown Beirut.
Some protests were violent. A dynamite stick exploded on Friday evening near a Lebanese army barracks close to the Palestinian Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp in the southern city of Sidon. Hamadeh was linked to Islamic extremists in the camp.
Hamadeh had taken refuge in Ein el-Hilweh camp -- which is off-limits to the Lebanese army -- after he killed the three servicemen. But five days later a Palestinian militant group handed Hamadeh over to the army.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS