LF Rallies in Ashrafieh to Demand Govt. Action on Tripoli Blasts Suspects

Lebanese Forces students staged a sit-in Thursday at Ashrafieh's Sassine Square to press the government to demand the handover of two Syrian officers indicted with involvement in the deadly 2013 blasts that rocked two Tripoli mosques.

“The regime that assassinated (LF founder and president-elect) Bashir (Gemayel) is the same regime that kidnapped Butros Khawand and blew up the Our Lady of Salvation Church and the two Tripoli mosques,” Jad Demian, the head of the LF student department, said at the rally.

He also revealed that the department has requested a meeting with Prime Minister Tammam Salam, hoping to receive an answer soon in order to hand the premier a memo regarding the demands.

On September 2, Lebanon's judiciary indicted two Syrian intelligence officers it accused of masterminding the deadly blasts.

The double bombing killed 45 people and wounded more than 500, and a series of indictments have already been handed down against Lebanese and Syrians accused of involvement.

The indictment names Captain Mohamed Ali Ali, an official in the Palestine branch of Syria's intelligence services, and Nasser Jouban, an official in Syria's political security branch.

The two men, neither of whom is in custody, are accused of helping to prepare the attack, placing explosives in cars and assigning a Lebanese cell to carry out the bombing.

The attacks targeted two Sunni mosques in Tripoli, which has frequently experienced tensions between Sunnis and Alawites who belong to the same religious minority as Syrian President Bashar Assad and tend to support his government.

The indictment alleges the attacks also involved other high-ranking Syrian officials, who are accused of directing Ali and Jouban to organize them.

The blasts in the northern city were the deadliest attack in Lebanon since the country's 1975-1990 civil war and raised fears that the conflict in neighboring Syria could be inexorably seeping across the border.

Lebanon's political landscape is largely divided between parties that back Assad and those who support the uprising against him that began in March 2011.