Naharnet Newsdesk - Leaflets Branding Lebanon as Blasphemous State

Leaflets Branding Lebanon as Blasphemous State

The army's intelligence branch has arrested a fanatic Muslim identified as Toufic Afioni while distributing leaflets branding the "blasphemous regime" in Lebanon and provoking sectarian dissension , An Nahar reported on Saturday.
Entitled "Destroying the Statue of Nationalists," the leaflets attacked Christians and all non-Wahhabi Muslims, agitated against Lebanon and Syria and deplored the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, The Communist Party and Al Baath as Christian-created.

Afioni told intelligence interrogators that he brought stacks of the leaflets from Saudi Arabia as he returned from Hajj and passed them to three fundamentalist activists in Tripoli, north Lebanon, for distribution in the city's low-income neighborhoods.

The three accomplices were also interrogated but were all released on bail after asserting that they had destroyed the leaflets. Afioni remained in custody.

Beirut, Updated 26 Mar 02, 14:03