Security Agencies Tasked with Protecting Threatened Officials as Charbel Admits to Shortcomings
إقرأ هذا الخبر بالعربية
Prime Minister Najib Miqati chaired on Wednesday a security meeting at the Grand Serail to tackle the threats directed against a number of March 14 opposition lawmakers and officials.
Interior Minister Marwan Charbel said after the meeting: “Regardless of all our training and preparations, we can only provide them with 50-60 percent protection.”
“We charged the ISF to employ all its agencies, in cooperation with other security apparatuses, to protect the politicians as much as possible,” he remarked after the meeting that was attended by General Security chief Abbas Ibrahim, Acting Internal Security Forces chief Roger Salem, and state security chief George Qaraa.
“We hope to find the solution to the problem at the nearest opportunity and until ISF chief Ashraf Rifi returns” from abroad, he stated.
“No one can be a hundred percent protected,” he said.
Commenting on the threat against MPs, Charbel said: “Some figures have security fears. All Lebanese have these fears.”
“These figures should limit their mobility and resort to secrecy when they do so,” he added.
“That way we can cooperate with them and hope to resolve this issue,” continued the minister.
“There is no doubt that protecting figures requires almost weekly training and coordination between the various security agencies,” he added.
“It is necessary to purchase and prepare the needed equipment that can be used to protect the officials, but such equipment is currently unavailable,” revealed Charbel.
Training is required and “protecting individuals requires the greatest training,” he explained to reporters.
In October, March 14 alliance MPs Ammar Houri, Ahmed Fatfat, Hadi Hbeish, Khaled al-Daher and Nuhad al-Mashnouq said that they were texted death threats from a Syrian telephone number before and after Internal Security Forces Intelligence Bureau head Wissam al-Hasan's assassination.
Hasan was killed in a car bomb in Beirut's Ashrafiyeh district on October 19.
12 December 2012, 20:18
19
next time ya charbel.. when you are sitting at a ministerial meeting.. look left.... then look right... and you will see either the people who committed the crime.. or their accomplices...
12 December 2012, 20:38
09
How ackward, should the government controlled security agencies know about the location of m14 MPs, their lifes would be even more at jeopardy since Hezbollah assassins, the ancestors of the Syrian Chabiha, have infiltrated all levels of these institutions.
12 December 2012, 22:43
08
Your right benzona! Funny we are always hearing/reading/etc. "tackle the threats directed against a number of March 14 opposition lawmakers and officials" BUT never hear any threats on ANY M8 members. Hmmmmm makes you wonder who the TRUE threat (filth) of the country is!
12 December 2012, 20:56
08
What a joke of a government. How can anyone with any self respect state such things. I want to see their tone and reaction when it is M8 people being threatend and actually assasinated. Then I want to play back their current responses back to them when they complain like the little girls they are.
12 December 2012, 21:56
03
who gave them the list? lol....if they have a list they should know who it was established by , no? why don t they tell people? or at least tell the people they know who are behind the threatening!
or they want to protect those who threaten lebanese politicians? LOL
and the stupidest comment ever: "“Some figures have security fears. All Lebanese have these fears.”
LOL!!! meaning = who are these people to complain? all lebanese have received death threats! lol! so shut up and be afraid like everyone lol!
13 December 2012, 00:23
03
Omg wow! :s he actualy said there's nothing we can do, go into hiding, kilna bil hawa sawa?!?! Wtf!!
Tab ya khayi at least create some kinda false sense of security, at least for the turisim, not to mention the stress we live with everyday knowing there is no hope.
Plz resign. N plz take the rest of the gov with u.
13 December 2012, 00:32
01
Omg wow! :s he actualy said there's nothing we can do, go into hiding, kilna bil hawa sawa?!?! Wtf!!
Tab ya khayi at least create some kinda false sense of security, at least for the turisim, not to mention the stress we live with everyday knowing there is no hope.
Plz resign. N plz take the rest of the gov with u.
13 December 2012, 15:46
00
lek badon men ye7mehon l 2ajheze l 2amneye 7ata ye7mo 8ayron, piece of advise to M14, "stay st home" cheeeeeeeeers
