Lebanon authorities, Christian camp at odds again after jail terms

by Salim Yassine

BEIRUT, March 20 (AFP) - Stiff jail terms handed down to three anti-Syrian Christian activists for contacts with Israel triggered a new row Wednesday between Lebanon's Christian camp and the Beirut authorities. A military court on Tuesday jailed Toufic Hindi, an advisor to the banned Christian Lebanese Forces (LF), and journalist Habib Younes for three years.

Fellow journalist Antoine Bassil received a four-year sentence. Around 500 students rallied in Christian districts of Beirut chanting "Syria out of Lebanon" and called for demonstrations on Thursday. Members of the "Qornet Shahwan Meeting," which unites Lebanon's main anti-Syrian Christian groupings under the wing of the Maronite patriarch, Nasrallah Sfeir, denounced the verdicts as "unjust" and politically-motivated.

"Lebanese authorities have served up an unjust verdict to serve Syrian interests," charged the Liberal National Party. It called in a statement for the Arab summit which Beirut is to host next week "to denounce the (Syrian) occupation" of Lebanon in the same terms as Israel's occupation of Palestine. MP Nayla Moawad, meanwhile, told AFP that the convictions were "political and aimed at justifying last August's raids" as well as discrediting the Christian opposition.

Hindi, Bassil and Younes were arrested in a sweeping crackdown of anti-Syrian militants in August 2001. The Qornet Shahwan group, named after a village in the Metn mountains of east Lebanon where it meets, will convene Thursday to plan a protest movement, said Moawad, widow of president Rene Moawad who was assassinated in 1989. And defence lawyers for the three jailed activists said they will appeal the verdicts within the next two weeks.

The appeal to a military cassation court will be based on the court's "failure to respect rights, notably those of the defence," said Naame Harb, protesting that several defence witnesses were not heard. He also charged that the military court's ruling was based on confessions the defendants said were extorted under torture and later retracted.

Found guilty of "contacts with the enemy", meaning Israel, a country with which Lebanon is technically at war, the three were also stripped of their civil rights, although charges of collaborating with the enemy were dropped. The Christian camp has been on the retreat following the end of the 1975-1990 civil war, with LF leader Samir Geagea jailed for the past seven years and anti-Syrian General Michel Aoun exiled in France since 1991.

The court verdicts come at a time of strains between the pro-Syrian government in Beirut and the Christian religious authorities. Father Selim Abu, rector of Saint Joseph University, run by the Jesuits, denounced the "Syrianisation of Lebanon" on Tuesday and called for students to vent their anger.

The initiative earned him a reprimand from the army command which told him to stop "misleading students" and refrain from making "provocative comments." And the Maronite patriarch, Sfeir, complained of the "continued Syrian occupation," in an interview with the London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat.

On the economic front, Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri has accused the Christian camp of sabotage at a time Lebanon is going through economic crisis.

Three Hezbollah members detained in Jordan for "security" reasons: minister

BEIRUT, March 20 (AFP) - Jordan's detention of three members of Lebanon's Shiite Muslim fundamentalist Hezbollah for trying to supply Palestinians with weapons was a security issue and not political, Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Moasher said Wednesday. "Hezbollah is a party that we respect. The three people were transporting weapons, which is against the law," Moasher said after talks in Beirut with Lebanon's President Emile Lahoud.

"It is a security matter, not a political one," Moasher said in Amman's first comment on the arrests. Hezbollah head Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said on March 8 the trio was attempting to supply the Palestinians with Katyusha rockets.

Hezbollah was largely credited for waging a war of resistance against Israeli troops in south Lebanon leading to their withdrawal in May 2000 after more than two decades of occupation.