Muslim Clerics Protest Omar al-Atrash Arrest, Accuse Army of Acting as 'Gang'
A number of Muslim scholars and clerics who hail from the Bekaa on Sunday staged a protest to condemn the arrest of Sheikh Omar al-Atrash, who is reportedly involved in recent bomb attacks.
“We are protesting due to the injustice that is being practiced against scholars and young men in Sunni regions who are supportive of the Syrian revolution,” Sheikh Khaled al-Arefi said at a sit-in outside the defense ministry building in Yarze.
Arefi voiced surprise that “detention has become a tool to physically liquidate Muslim clerics,” wondering whether the army was “acting as an army or as a gang?”
“If aiding the (Syrian) refugees deserves liquidation, we say it loud and clear: the scholars committee will not allow authorities to use double standards,” the cleric warned.
The delegation called on the president, the prime minister, the army chief and the intelligence director to take a “serious” stance.
“If the situation continued in this manner, what kind of security would they be seeking? We can rein in our youths for a while, but should injustice aggravate, everyone will regret that,” the delegation warned.
Another cleric at the rally noted that the clerics have no faith in “the probe into the bombing that al-Atrash was said to be involved in.”
Prior to the sit-in, army troops had cordoned off all the entrances leading to the defense ministry.
Meanwhile, LBCI TV quoted sources following up on the investigations as saying that “Atrash's interrogation is being conducted under the supervision of the relevant judicial authorities and he has confessed to dealing with terrorist groups and facilitating the transportation of booby-trapped cars."
On Friday, al-Akhbar newspaper broke the news about Atrash's arrest, saying he is “suspected of offering refuge for individuals with alleged links to the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.”
Atrash played a “logistic role in terms of providing cars and facilitating the movements of the group suspected of carrying out the Bir al-Abed and Rweiss bombings,” al-Akhbar added.
The cleric is registered with Dar al-Fatwa, the top Sunni authority in the country, al-Akhbar noted. He is also a cousin of Omar al-Atrash, who was accused of involvement in the Aug. 9 Bir al-Abed bombing and who was killed in an ambush on the Lebanese-Syrian border on September 11.
In January alone, three car bomb attacks have rocked areas that are considered Hizbullah strongholds in the country. Two bombings hit the Beirut southern suburb of Haret Hreik and another bomb attack targeted the Bekaa town of Hermel.
The three bombings were carried out by suicide attackers.
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