Six Turn Themselves in over Storming of Asharq al-Awsat's Offices

Six young men have turned themselves in to police after they were summoned by the judiciary over their storming of the Beirut offices of the Saudi daily Asharq al-Awsat, the Internal Security Forces announced on Sunday.

In a video posted online Saturday, the young men arrive on foot at a police station in Ashrafieh, in what resembles a small demo, chanting the national anthem and carrying a Lebanese flag.

“We are here to turn ourselves in. We are not terrorists, we were defending this flag and the country's sovereignty,” one of them tells a police officer outside the station.

“We are not thugs. We restored Lebanon's dignity by what we did yesterday,” another one adds.

“We did not attack anyone and we did not harm anyone,” one of the young men says.

Four of them were identified in the video as Bilal Allaw, Hussein Nassereddine, Mohammed Hirz and Hassan Qteish.

The six young men were detained at the judiciary's request as a search and arrest warrant was issued for social media activist Abbas Zahri who is still at large.

An ISF patrol had on Saturday arrested the activist Pierre al-Hashash in the northern city of Batroun.

According to an ISF statement issued Sunday, Hashash led the attack on the newspaper's offices and incited the other protesters to join him.

The young men stormed Asharq al-Awsat's office on Friday in protest at a cartoon deemed insulting to Lebanon.

A video posted on social media shows the protesters arguing with Lebanese employees and asking them to stage a strike to condemn the published cartoon, which contains the Lebanese flag and the phrase “The Lebanese State: An April Fools' Lie”.

Some of the protesters then move to the office's desks and start pushing stacks of newspapers to the ground, unfazed by the employees' appeals.

In a statement, the newspaper voiced regret over “the controversy that accompanied the cartoon,” noting that “some people have interpreted it in a wrong way.”

“Asharq al-Awsat stresses its respect for Lebanon and notes that the cartoon was aimed at highlighting the situation that the State is going through in a country that is living a big lie caused by the attempts to impose hegemony on it and push it away from its Arab neighborhood,” the daily added.

The incident came hours after the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya news channel shut down its Beirut offices, citing “difficult circumstances” and “safety” concerns.

The developments also follow tensions between the kingdom and Lebanon's Hizbullah and a series of Saudi measures against Lebanon and the Iran-backed party.

Y.R.