Lebanese police on Sunday arrested radical Islamic preacher Omar Bakri, just days after the formerly British-based cleric boasted he would “not spend one day” of a life sentence behind bars.
He now faces a retrial because his first trial was held in absentia.
“He was arrested by a patrol of intelligence agents from the Internal Security Force in his home in Tripoli,” a security official said.
Police said that Bakri tried to flee in a car as the patrol closed in on his house in the main northern city, prompting an officer to open fire to prevent him from escaping.
“As the patrol went to arrest him ... he tried to flee. A member of the security forces opened fire and two bullets hit the back tires” of Bakri’s getaway vehicle, a police statement said.
He was duly arrested and -transferred to Beirut, police said.
A judicial source said Bakri must be retried before a military court in line with Lebanese law because he had been sentenced in absentia.
Bakri, a fundamentalist Sunni Muslim who has praised the Sept. 11 terror attacks and hailed the hijackers as the “magnificent 19,” was sentenced to life by a military court last Thursday.
The 50-year-old, who lived in Britain for 20 years, was found guilty, along with more than 40 other Lebanese, Palestinians, Syrians and Saudis, of “incitement to murder, theft and the possession of arms and explosives.”
A judicial source said the convicted people “belonged to an armed group with the purpose of ... killing and sabotaging. They also helped terrorists in moving and gave them weapons to kill civilians and troops.”
The source did not specify which attacks were involved, but said they took place in Lebanon.
The day after the sentence was handed down he vowed he would “not spend one day in prison.”
“I will not hand myself in to any court. I do not believe in the law in Britain as in Lebanon,” he said at his home.
Bakri, who failed to show up for sentencing on Thursday, said he had not been formally told the court would issue a verdict and insisted he was innocent.
The Syrian-born cleric, who also has Lebanese nationality, denied he had any links to al-Qaeda.
“I have no ties to al-Qaeda, direct or indirect, other than the fact that I believe in the same ideology,” he said at his home in Tripoli’s Abi Samra neighborhood, a hub for radical Islamist groups.
On Saturday Bakri appealed to Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah for help.
“I urge Hassan Nasrallah to look at the injustice facing Omar Bakri who backs all resistance [movements] against Israel,” Hezbollah’s arch-foe, he said in an interview on the private television station NTV.
In 2005, Bakri was banned from Britain for five years as part of government measures following the London underground and bus bombings that year. He sparked outrage in Britain in the wake of the bombings for saying he would not hand over to police Muslims planning to launch attacks.
He also called former prime minister British John Major and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin “legitimate targets.”
Upon his arrival in Beirut in 2005, Bakri was detained but freed the next day. No charges were pressed against him at the time.
Born in 1960 to a wealthy Syrian family, Bakri began -studying Islam at the age of five and at 15 joined the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.
He later abandoned the Brotherhood and joined the Hizb ut--Tahrir (Arabic for Party of Liberation), a movement that aims to join all Islamic states under one caliphate.
He split with Hizb ut-Tahrir in 1983 and founded his own group, Al-Muhajirun (The Emigrants), in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, that year.
When expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1986, he moved to Britain and gained a following as a preacher before his expulsion. Al-Muhajirun has also been proscribed under the UK Terrorism Act 2000.
Bakri has two wives — British and Lebanese — and seven children. He is expecting an eighth child with his Lebanese wife. His British wife and children still live in London.
He has insisted his message is peaceful and said the controversial “magnificent 19” comment was a stunt.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY STAFF WRITER
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing