Solidarity Rally at Napoleon Hotel as Pharaon Stresses Importance of Security for Tourism

A meeting “in solidarity with the tourism season and hotels” was held Wednesday at Hamra's Napoleon Hotel, the scene of a major security raid last Friday which resulted in the arrest of a French national plotting a terror attack.

“Napoleon Hotel and Hamra are still symbols of tourism and dynamism in Lebanon. The recent security raid will not tarnish the district's image,” Tourism Minister Michel Pharaon announced at the meeting which was held at the aforementioned hotel.

"The security measures taken to combat terrorism succeeded in Beirut and the North and are necessary to safeguard stability,” Pharaon noted.

He stressed that Napoleon Hotel's reputation “was not tarnished.”

“Security stability is necessary and we all support security for the sake of tourism and the economy,” Pharaon added.

The meeting was also attended by head of the hotel owners association Pierre Ashkar and Beirut MP Ammar Houri, a member of the Mustaqbal bloc.

France said Tuesday one of its nationals had been arrested in Lebanon on suspicion of planning an attack under what a Lebanese newspaper claimed was the influence of the ISIL jihadist group sweeping through Iraq.

Lebanese security forces announced Friday they had detained 17 people at the Napoleon Hotel following a tip-off that attacks by a "terrorist group" were being planned in the capital and other parts of the country.

Around 102 hotel guests were interrogated on site.

A Lebanese judicial source told Agence France Presse Monday that all had been released except a Frenchman originally from the Comoros islands in the Indian Ocean.

French foreign ministry spokesman Romain Nadal confirmed Tuesday that "a French national was arrested in Beirut."

According to the al-Akhbar newspaper, the suspect was part of a group of four would-be suicide bombers who had come to Lebanon.

The daily said he had admitted coming to the country with a view of committing a suicide attack under the influence of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which has overrun major areas of five provinces in Iraq and is currently pressing onto Baghdad.

It said that another of the four may have been behind a suicide attack that actually took place in the Dahr al-Baydar area in east Lebanon on Friday, killing one person and wounding at least 30 others.

A few days later, a suicide car bombing in the Tayyouneh area on the fringes of Beirut's southern suburbs, Hizbullah's main bastion, killed a security officer and wounded 20 others.

Several suspected terrorists have been arrested in various areas of the country since the security crackdown began on Friday.

Y.R.