4 Lebanese Held on Suspicion of Facilitating Illegal Travel to Australia

Security services on Tuesday arrested four Lebanese citizens on suspicion of involvement in the case of people smuggling to Australia via Indonesia and Malaysia, state-run National News Agency reported.

“Four Lebanese, some of whom hail from Akkar, have been arrested for interrogation over possible involvement in the activities of people smuggling between Lebanon, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia,” NNA said.

“Investigations are ongoing and the security authorities that are probing the case are being very tight-lipped,” the agency added.

Separately, NNA said Akkar's forensic doctor Hussein Adawiyeh, accompanied by agents from the Beirut-based Central Investigations Bureau, collected samples from relatives of possible victims of the Indonesia boat incident with the aim of conducting DNA tests and identifying the bodies that are still in Indonesia.

Twenty-eight Lebanese asylum-seekers died as their boat capsized off Indonesia on Friday while seeking to sail to Australia. Many more are still feared missing.

The Lebanese Foreign Ministry said there were 68 Lebanese, including children, on board the ill-fated vessel and that 18 survived the ordeal while at least 29 were still missing.

Most of them hail from the impoverished district of Akkar, where thousands of Syrians have also sought refuge from the 30-month conflict that has wracked their country.

"Illegal migration has increased with the influx of Syrian refugees," a Lebanese security source told Agence France Presse on Sunday on condition of anonymity.

"Criminal networks have started to focus on Syrians but also on Lebanese who want to emigrate," he said of the people smugglers.

According to the source, around 250 people, including Syrians and Lebanese, have since March paid huge sums of money to people smugglers for trips to Australia.

Relatives of Lebanese who have emigrated through such networks in recent months told AFP that a Tripoli-based man organizes the journeys from Lebanon to Australia through Indonesia.

The smugglers' contact in Indonesia is an Iraqi man known only as Abu Saleh who monitors the arrivals, they said.