Anti-Trash Protesters Charged with Defamation, Trial Set for August

The State Prosecutor for Appeals, Judge Ziad Haidar, charged on Thursday four anti-trash demonstrations with defamation over the interception of the car of Social Affairs Minister Rashid Derbas, the state-run National News Agency reported.

NNA said Tareq Mallah and the three others, Bilal Allaw, Firas Bou Zeineddine and Ihab Yazbek, were charged and referred to Beirut Judge Iman Abdallah.

Their trial was set for August 4, said the agency.

Meanwhile, the campaign pressing for the activists' release announced that Beirut attorney general Judge Ziad Haidar has filed a lawsuit against Mallah and Bou Zeineddine on charges of “defamation, libel, protesting, destruction and sabotage.”

Mallah's lawyer Nizar Saghiyeh revealed that Derbas refrained from filing a personal lawsuit against the young men but instead tasked “his driver” with suing the activists.

In the evening, civil society activists and friends and relatives of the two men held a sit-in outside the building of the Social Affairs Ministry in Badaro. They later marched to the nearby Justice Palace.

Several sit-ins were held in recent days to protest the continued detention of the anti-garbage activists.

The Internal Security Forces Intelligence Branch arrested the four protesters after Derbas filed a lawsuit accusing Mallah and others of “insulting” him and attacking his car during a protest in Beirut's Spears Street.

But on Thursday, Derbas denied that he had taken such a move, only saying “let justice take its course.”

Mallah and his comrades belong to the “You Stink” anti-trash campaign, which on Tuesday blocked several roads in Beirut to protest the authorities' failure to find a permanent solution to the waste crisis.

G.K./Y.R.