Relatives of Military Victims Reject Settlement over Shaker, Urge Death Penalty for Assailants against Army
The relatives of the victims of the army, who were killed in various clashes against extremists over the past two years, rejected on Sunday a possible settlement that would pardon fugitive Fadel Shaker.
They demanded during a rally in downtown Beirut the death penalty against “all who assaulted the army and created incitement against it.”
“We reject putting the assailants on trial, but they should be hanged. We refuse any other alternative,” he added.
“We are here to pay our respects to the martyrs and reject any settlement at their expense,” they added.
“The blood of our sons is not for sale. The families of the victims decide about giving a pardon,” continued the demonstrators.
“Officials should not even think about striking a settlement over the lives of our martyrs,” they stressed.
“Shame on every Lebanese who does not value the blood of our martyrs,” they stated angrily.
“We salute the military and those who gave their lives for Lebanon,” they declared.
They urged Army Commander General Jean Qahwaji to “strike with an iron fist” terrorism in the northern city of Tripoli, northeastern border town of Arsal, the North and Bekaa.
Media reports had in recent days speculated that a settlement would be reached to issue a pardon to former singer Shaker, who had joined the Salafist movement in recent years and supported cleric Ahmed al-Asir.
Asir's supporters were involved in 2013 in clashes with the army in the area of Abra in the southern city of Sidon.
At least 18 soldiers and dozens of gunmen were killed in the fighting.
In an interview recently, Shaker -- who has been on the run for nearly two years -- said he wants to return to his "normal, natural life" with his friends and family. He denied that he took part in the clashes.
He is currently residing in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Hilweh and is wanted, along with some 50 others, for crimes against the army.
Though he grew to become one of the Arab world's most famous singers, Shaker suffered through a miserable childhood of poverty, which a onetime musician friend says helped lead him down a dark path later in life.
Now in his mid-forties, Shaker was born to a Palestinian mother and Lebanese father in the country's biggest Palestinian refugee camp, Ain el-Hilweh.
Born Fadel Shmandur, he began his career as a popular wedding singer who performed from the rooftops of the camp, an over-crowded and hopeless place.
In his prime, Shaker sang love songs that were instant region-wide hits. He released his first album in the late nineties, and continued to perform until 2011.
Shaker's brother had long been a strict Muslim, and he tried for years to convince him to leave music.
But it wasn't until after the outbreak of an uprising in Syria against President Bashar Assad that Shaker became convinced that singing is haram, or forbidden in Islam.
Shaker soon became the best-known face of Asir's small movement of openly sectarian, Sunni radicals and praised the cleric as "the lion of the Sunnis."
M.T.
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