8 Lebanese Freed by UAE Arrive in Beirut
A Middle East Airlines plane carrying eight Lebanese released by the UAE landed Tuesday at Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport, state-run National News Agency said.
TV footage showed emotional reunions between the returnees and their families at the airport.
The former detainees did not speak to journalists after arriving in Beirut and some relatives rushed to cover the returnees' heads with pieces of clothes to conceal their faces from cameras.
NNA identified the eight men as Nader Khalil, Hassan Husseini, Mohammed al-Husseini, Maher al-Zein, Zaher al-Zein, Ali Mukhadder, Hassan Zreiq and Hussein Zreiq.
General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, who led a two-year mediation for the release of the Lebanese citizens, had announced Monday that ten of them would arrive in Lebanon on Tuesday.
One was released and flown home on Sunday.
It was not immediately clear why they had been detained.
But with Gulf nations rocked by tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the UAE has in recent years expelled or sentenced to jail dozens of Lebanese Shiites over alleged ties to Hizbullah, a Tehran-backed Lebanese group Abu Dhabi classifies as a "terrorist" organization.
Another 15 Lebanese will remain in the UAE facing trial, Ibrahim has said.
Amnesty International reported on May 15, 2019 that an Emirati court had that day sentenced a Lebanese man to life imprisonment and two compatriots to 10 years in prison on charges of planning attacks on behalf of Hizbullah.
Emirati state news agency WAM reported on the same date that the Abu Dhabi Federal Appeal Court sentenced "three Arab nationals" to life and two others to 10 years in a case involving charges against 11 people of "forming a terror cell affiliated to Hizbullah in Lebanon, as well as planning acts of terrorism."
Eight of the accused were Lebanese citizens resident in the United Arab Emirates for more than 15 years, seven of them as employees of Dubai-based airline Emirates, Amnesty said.
They were arrested between December 2017 and February 2018 and put on trial under terrorism charges.
Since 2011, Ibrahim has repeatedly interceded to release Lebanese and non-Lebanese detainees from foreign countries, including in neighboring war-torn Syria and in Iran.
02 February 2021, 17:58
10
And yet 8 more shia thieves in lebanon.
Like if we didnt have enough here...
03 February 2021, 06:08
01
Yet you wonder why all Shia Lebanese remains loyal to Hezbollah?
Look at your own words, this is a reason too.
You are lousy.
Shia-Lebanese gets arrested for being Shia only in UAE.
03 February 2021, 17:01
00
Hezbollah armed milicia who is holding us at gunpoint and amal who is stealing our taxes are the very reason we are fedup with shias
04 February 2021, 08:20
00
This is why Shiites are ridiculed on a daily basis. Playing victims non stop when the majority of you are violent, uneducated, bullies, thieves, thugs and should have your citizenships revoked because you are traitors who sell and sold your country to a bigger thief with a turban. Shame on you take some responsibility for your damn actions. Those people were planning to blow up buildings and planes but of course you didn't read why they were arrested. Has nothing to do with their Shiism or their crazy beliefs where they beat themselves up and cry but has to do with the fact that they are brainwashed enough to kill people in the name of religion. Shiites will spend their lives claiming they don't get anything and are underrepresented when in fact they're making all Lebanese lives miserable. A Lebanon without you crazies would be a 1st world beautiful country. Crazies include the Palestinians and Syrians who turns Lebanon into a battlefield for the last 40 years.
