Saqr Charges 11 with Terror Offenses, Including Mawlawi, Mansour
State Commissioner to the Military Court Judge Saqr Saqr on Thursday filed a lawsuit against a detainee and 10 fugitives, including notorious Tripoli militants Shadi al-Mawlawi and Osama Mansour.
According to state-run National News Agency, they were charged with “belonging to an armed terrorist group in order to stage terrorist acts, and holing up at a Tripoli mosque with the aim of preparing bombs and explosive devices to target Lebanese army troops in the area.”
The eleven were referred to First Military Examining Magistrate Riad Abu Ghida.
Earlier in the day, Military Examining Magistrate Nabil Wehbe issued in an indictment in the case of the August 3 bomb explosion that killed Tripoli resident Issam al-Shaar in the al-Jinan area.
Mawlawi and Mansour were also among those charged in the case.
NNA said Wehbe accused “eight detainees and the three fugitives Osama Mansour, Shadi al-Mawlawi and Amir Mansour of forming an armed gang with the aim of carrying out terror acts and undermining the state's authority.”
On September 12, Mansour, who leads an Islamist militia in Tripoli's Bab al-Tabbaneh, denied reports that his group had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State or al-Nusra Front.
The 27-year-old militant had been wanted on dozens of arrest warrants and was recently apprehended in the Bekaa before being eventually released, according to LBCI television.
“We're closer to al-Nusra Front's policy, ideology … and behavior on the ground. We admire al-Nusra Front and we're closer to it, but we have not pledged allegiance to the IS or the Front,” Mansour, who some locals refer to as “the emir”, said in an interview on LBCI.
Citing security reports, the TV network said Mansour's 20-member group has recently “occupied” the Omar bin Massoud Mosque in Bab al-Tabbaneh and that the militant started “playing a bigger role” in the city with the beginning of the Arsal battle in the Bekaa in early August.
Mansour and his group have however denied “occupying” the mosque, noting that they are present there because they are residents of the neighborhood, LBCI added.
Shadi al-Mawlawi, a fugitive Islamist militant and a member of Mansour's group, also appeared in LBCI's report.
“We contributed to the recent release of the five Sunni troops” who had been kidnapped by Nusra during Arsal's battle, Mawlawi told LBCI.
“As for the Rafida (Shiite) troops, they have showed hostility and fought our people in (Syria's) Qusayr and Yabrud and (Sidon's) Abra. We wish they would be killed,” Mawlawi added.
Y.R.
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