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| Middle East |
| Lebanon Islamists Warn Army, Claim Bomb Attempt |
| 2002-07-23 |
| An Islamist group warned the Lebanese army Monday it would pay dearly for the arrest of a suspected Muslim militant. In a statement, the group, Jamaat an-Nour, also said it was responsible for planting a bomb at a mosque frequented by a cleric who helped in the arrest. "If we can't have our way, we'll bomb people at random. That's the way we extract bloody revenge. It's our right as Muslims, 'cuz we're a religion of peace..." The army defused a bomb Saturday at a mosque in Sidon, where Muslim clerics last week handed over Badie Hamadeh, a Lebanese man charged with killing three security officers before taking refuge in a Palestinian refugee camp. Military sources accuse Hamadeh of having ties to Osbat al-Ansar, a Palestinian Islamist group based in the Ain el-Hilweh camp. They said they suspected a member of the group of sheltering the suspect. In its statement, Jamaat an-Nour, thought to have split from Osbat al-Ansar, alluded to the bomb incident as punishment for a cleric who helped in the arrest of Hamadeh, and warned of retribution against the Lebanese army. Ummm... I don't think I'd like it if the USA took in 350,000 refugees and they started warning of retribution whenever we tried to arrest a murderer or two. I don't think I'd like it at all... "Jamaat an-Nour considers turning brother Badie Hamadeh over...to be treason, and Saturday night sent its first warning to (Sheikh) Maher Hammoud," it said. "We warn the Lebanese army and all those implicated in this incident (Hamadeh's arrest) that they will pay dearly for their treachery, deception and baseness." Yup. Go ahead and declare war on an army. Of course, this being Lebanon, they can get away with stuff like that. Maybe they'll be lucky and bring back the good old days, when there was total breakdown of civil society and all a man needed to succeed in life was a gun and maybe a little Kevlar... Lebanese army posts have been the target of several bomb attacks outside Ain el-Hilweh, the largest of a dozen camps which are home to an estimated 350,000 Palestinians and are effectively under the control of Palestinian factions. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #2 Only if he lets you have your way. |
| Posted by: Fred 2002-07-24 07:33:19 |
| #1 Fine with me. Let the Palestinians and the Lebanese fight it out amongst themselves. Then, of course, they won't have any time for Israel. If we're lucky, the Syrians will get involved. Moslem brotherhood, indeed. I thought it was a sin to kill a fellow Moslem. |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2002-07-23 21:58:32 |