Family of Suspect Managing Free Sunni Brigade Twitter Account Close to Hizbullah
The father of the 19-year-old suspect, who confessed to operating the Twitter account of the so-called Free Sunnis of Baalbek Brigade, said on Saturday that the family is close to Hizbullah.
“The Internal Security Forces Intelligence Branch stopped us at an army checkpoint in the town of Riyaq (in Baalbek) and demanded to inspect our identification papers then detained Hussein,” Shaman al-Hussein, the father, told the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat.
He told the newspaper that he informed Hizbullah swiftly of the incident, pointing out that his “family and I are close to Hizbullah and we have nothing to do with the accusations against my son.”
Shaman said that the concerned Hizbullah officials told him that the matter will be followed up.
“But I was surprised to hear media reports that my son operates and manages the twitter account of the group,” the father told the newspaper.
“The reports are unreasonable taken into consideration that his cellular phone has been broken for more than a week.”
On Friday, the ISF Intelligence Branch took control over the Twitter account of the obscure Free Sunnis of Baalbek Brigade and uploaded a picture of the Lebanese flag as the profile picture and the header of the account, a day after the security apparatus announced the arrest of the operator of the vague group's twitter account.
The ISF also tweeted the arrest of the 19-year-old boy from the group's account and deactivated it later on.
“The Intelligence Branch detained H. Sh. H.,” the tweet said, adding that he “confessed that he is the owner of the said Twitter account.”
Itihad, the mother of the suspect expressed fear that her son is being tortured by the Intelligence Bureau.
“We are poor, my son doesn't even own a laptop,” the mother told al-Hayat newspaper, noting that he didn't continue his middle school education.
News of his arrest broke out on Thursday evening after the ISF tweeted the matter from its twitter account.
According to the tweet, the suspect is a Lebanese national and had confessed to managing the shadowy group's account.
The cyber crimes bureau announced recently that the Twitter account of the vague Brigade is being probed.
On July 24, the account was unreachable on Twitter, despite having many followers. Another account was founded to replace it but could not enjoy the same popularity.
The obscure group has threatened to target Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq, army chief Gen. Jean Qahwaji and Maj. Suzan al-Hajj, chief of the Internal Security Forces' Cyber Crime and Intellectual Property Protection bureau.
It has repeatedly slammed the military institution as the “Crusader Army” and it vowed to task gunmen to attack churches in Lebanon and in the eastern Bekaa valley in particular.
Mashnouq had revealed recently that tweets by the so-called “Free Sunnis Brigade” were in fact made by a foreign intelligence agency.
However, he did not disclose further details on the matter.
But the shadowy brigade was quick to hit back, telling Mashnouq that he will not be able to prevent the group's "jihadist operations."
Consequently, another Twitter account emerged as a response to the Free Sunnis of Baalbek Brigade under the name of “Free Crusader Brigade.”
H.K.
D.A.
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