Syrian Interior Minister Leaves Beirut after One-Week Medical Treatment

إقرأ هذا الخبر بالعربية W460

Syrian Interior Minister Mohammed al-Shaar on Wednesday left for Damascus via the Beirut Rafik Hariri International Airport aboard a private jet, after spending one week at the American University of Beirut Medical Center for treatment of wounds he sustained in a suicide bomb attack on the interior ministry, Lebanon's National News Agency reported.

“Shaar left hospital on Wednesday afternoon,” Turkey's state-run Anatolia news agency quoted medical sources at AUBMC as saying.

It was not clear if Shaar's treatment was completed or if he left because of political pressure.

Shaar was wounded in a deadly attack on December 12 on the Syrian interior ministry in Damascus. The attack was claimed the next day by the jihadist al-Nusra Front.

"His condition is stable and he was able to talk to the people who received him at the airport," a Lebanese minister told Agence France Presse last Wednesday.

According to a security source, Shaar was lightly wounded on the shoulder when his office ceiling collapsed.

Shaar also escaped another deadly attack on July 18, when four top regime officials were killed in Damascus, among them President Bashar Assad's brother-in-law Assef Shawkat.

A Lebanese lawyer said he filed a lawsuit on Monday against Shaar, accusing him of having ordered hundreds of killings in the northern city of Tripoli in 1986.

Shortly after he arrived in Beirut for treatment last week, anti-Syrian politicians, including legislators Jamal al-Jarrah and Mohammed Kabbara, called for Shaar's arrest.

The case filed by lawyer Tareq Shandab accuses Shaar, who in 1986 was in charge of security in Tripoli, of "genocide, ethnic cleansing, political assassination and the killing of religious officials and children in Bab al-Tabbaneh, Tripoli, in 1986."

It alleges that Shaar and his aides along with "criminal" Lebanese accomplices on December 19, 1986 "killed and slaughtered more than 600 people from the Tabbaneh district."

At the time, Lebanon was immersed in a bloody civil war that broke out in 1975 and left some 150,000 people dead over 15 years.

Comments 8
Thumb LebDinosaur 26 December 2012, 16:44

Unbelievable. Why didn't they arrest him?
This government has no spine. All talk, no action.

Missing sikoflebanon 26 December 2012, 18:39

omg the level of jarabness has no limit
the article states the charges
a lawyer did file a complaint
chou khass Saudi officials or the Bush family???

Thumb LebDinosaur 27 December 2012, 06:00

Not because of the lawyer. Because he was responsible for killing Lebanese people.
We, Lebanese have given carte Blanche to Syrians for many years & we let them get away with murder after murder. It's enough.
Arresting him would have been a warning & a lesson to others.

Missing phillipo 27 December 2012, 08:35

How about genocide? The ICC would have a good time listening to his reasonings.

Missing gabby12 26 December 2012, 18:35

The criminal Hezz gov't let him go. He killed Lebanese and was a criminal, but as long as they weren't Shia that he killed they got him out. Maybe Bassil let him use his private jet paid for by the poor of Lebanon.

Missing mohammad_ca 27 December 2012, 02:00

sho sho sho sho sho? wayn hay? syria fought hibocrap? uff? explain please... and then explain how ALL armed groups had their weapons taken away except for hizbocrap, and then explain why nasrocrap carried posters of both ASSads when their thugs were kicked out of lebanon....

Missing gabby12 26 December 2012, 23:40

It doesn't matter what you think Mo-propaganda. Your master in Syria is going to fall....then your neighborhood will be next. Possibly by Israel, but I think the FSA will come and say hello. Then lets see you grow a pair.

Thumb primesuspect 27 December 2012, 12:44

We need to find out who supplied his personal security, and more importantly the private jet because he or she is an accomplice of a criminal. It cannot go unpunished.