Shaker's Lawyer Says He Intends to Turn Himself in Soon
Former singer turned Islamist militant Fadel Shaker has decided to turn himself in to security agencies in the coming days, his lawyer announced on Monday.
“Fadel wants to turn himself in in the coming days,” the lawyer May Khansa, who is defending him before the Military Court, told Agence France-Presse.
She stressed that he severed his ties with fugitive Islamist cleric Ahmed al-Asir “some time ago.”
"He has abandoned the hardline religious path he was on," his lawyer added.
Later on Monday, al-Jadeed television quoted Shaker as saying that he will not turn himself in until his judicial file is “settled.”
“The media reports are baseless,” he added.
Shaker is hiding out in a home he recently bought in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Hilweh, his birthplace, according to witnesses who recently met him.
He looked gaunt, having lost significant weight after recent illness -- and the bushy beard he sported in 2013 was gone.
The people who met him said the reasons for his sudden about-face were unclear.
Al-Akhbar newspaper reported that an apparent deal with state security forces may see a reduced sentence for the former singer.
The daily also said that influential Lebanese and Arab figures were mediating in the case, identifying some of them as Army Commander General Jean Qahwaji, Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, LBCI TV chairman and CEO Pierre al-Daher and ex-minister Layla al-Solh Hamadeh.
In remarks to OTV released in the evening, Qahwaji confirmed that “concert organizer Imad Qansou contacted the Army Command recently in a bid to help Fadel Shaker.”
“The answer was that the issue is exclusively in the hands of the Military Court,” OTV quoted Qahwaji as saying.
Asked about reports of an alleged link between Shaker's case and the possible release of Lebanese troops and policemen abducted by jihadist groups, Qahwaji noted that “the negotiations over the hostages are not being conducted by the Army Command but rather by other political and security authorities.”
“Reports that I'm mediating with Alwaleed bin Talal to resolve Fadel Shaker's case are fabricated,” ex-minister al-Solh for her part told OTV.
LBCI's al-Daher also denied any involvement in the case.
In an interview with LBCI released Saturday, Shaker -- who has been on the run for nearly two years -- said he wants to return to his "normal, natural life" with his friends and family.
Shaker also denied fighting alongside al-Asir's gunmen in the fierce 2013 clashes with the army in the Sidon suburb of Abra. At least 18 soldiers and dozens of gunmen were killed in the fighting.
He said he "never carried a weapon."
The interview is one of the man's rare public appearances since a video uploaded to YouTube during the street fighting. In that video, he called his enemies pigs and dogs.
Shaker and more than 50 other suspected militants face charges of committing crimes against the military.
LBCI said the interview was filmed at the Ain el-Hilweh camp near Sidon.
Though he grew to become one of the Arab world's most famous singers, Shaker suffered through a miserable childhood of poverty, which a onetime musician friend says helped lead him down a dark path later in life.
Now in his mid-forties, Shaker was born to a Palestinian mother and Lebanese father in the country's biggest Palestinian refugee camp, Ain el-Hilweh.
Born Fadel Shmandur, he began his career as a popular wedding singer who performed from the rooftops of the camp, an over-crowded and hopeless place.
In his prime, Shaker sang love songs that were instant region-wide hits. He released his first album in the late nineties, and continued to perform until 2011.
Shaker's brother had long been a strict Muslim, and he tried for years to convince him to leave music.
But it wasn't until after the outbreak of an uprising in Syria against President Bashar Assad that Shaker became convinced that singing is haram, or forbidden in Islam.
Shaker soon became the best-known face of Asir's small movement of openly sectarian, Sunni radicals and praised the cleric as "the lion of the Sunnis."
Y.R.
Source: Agence France Presse, Naharnet
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