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.
Source: Naharnet
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