Lebanon summons US envoy over ex-militiaman’s flight

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s foreign minister summoned the US ambassador Friday over the return of a naturalised American former militiaman accused of torture to the United States despite a travel ban, state media said.

Amer al-Fakhoury, a former member of the South Lebanon Army (SLA), went into exile more than two decades ago before returning to Lebanon in September, when he was arrested.

The 57-year-old was released on Monday over a statute of limitations on his alleged crimes, a judicial source said, though put under a travel ban, according to state media.

US President Donald Trump on Thursday hailed Fakhoury’s return to the United States, saying he was suffering from late-stage cancer.

On Friday, Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Nassif Hitti asked US ambassador Dorothy Shea to explain “the circumstances of Amer Fakhoury being transferred abroad from the US embassy,” the National News Agency said. The head of the powerful Shiite movement Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, later Friday slammed Fakhoury’s departure as an “escape” organised by the US embassy and a “flagrant violation of (Lebanese) sovereignty and justice”.

A security source said on Thursday that Fakhoury left the country in a helicopter from the US embassy heading to an unknown destination, but the embassy did not comment on the report.

When Fakhoury was arrested, a Lebanese security source said he had served as a senior warden in the notorious Khiyam prison, opened in 1984 by the Christian-dominated SLA after Israel occupied southern Lebanon. Witnesses accuse Fakhoury of ordering or taking part in beatings of thousands of inmates.

The veteran militiaman’s release by a military court on Monday prompted an outcry on social media.

Hezbollah, largely credited with Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000, said it would be more honourable for the judges involved to resign rather than “succumb to the pressures that led to this decision”.

On Friday, the head of the military tribunal resigned over the criticism.

In a televised speech Friday, Nasrallah condemned “strong American pressures” on political officials and judges in Lebanon to obtain Fakhoury’s “unconditional release”. The Hezbollah chief accused Washington of making “direct threats” against Lebanese authorities, including “imposing economic sanctions”, “a withdrawal of aid to the Lebanese army” and the addition of officials to the US sanctions list.

“The Amer al-Fakhoury case must continue before the court. The Lebanese judiciary should not consider the case as closed,” he said.