Hezbollah delegation invites Aoun to Nasrallah's funeral
A Hezbollah delegation led by MP Mohammad Raad on Thursday handed President Joseph Aoun an invitation to attend the funerals of slain Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and his successor Sayyed Hashem Safieddine.
Hezbollah officials have been visiting the country’s leaders and heads of political parties to invite them to the funeral that will be held on February 23 at Beirut’s Camille Chamoun Sports City Stadium.
Hezbollah supporters and invitees from 79 countries are supposed to fill the stadium and the neighboring streets.
"After security conditions prevented holding a funeral" during two months of all-out war between Hezbollah and Israel that ended on November 27, Hezbollah has decided to hold "on February 23 a grand... public funeral" for Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s current leader Sheikh Naim Qassem said in a televised speech earlier this month.
"We hope that it will be a grand funeral procession befitting this great personality," he said.
Safieddine will be buried "as Secretary-General" or leader of Hezbollah, because "we had... elected His Eminence Sayyed Hashem as Secretary-General... but he was martyred on October 3, a day or two before the announcement," Qassem added.
Nasrallah will be buried on the outskirts of Beirut "in a plot of land we chose between the old and new airport roads," while Safieddine will be buried in his hometown of Deir Qanoun in southern Lebanon, he said.
Nasrallah had been temporarily buried elsewhere due to security concerns, Qassem said.
Shiite Muslim rites provide for such a temporary burial when circumstances prevent a proper funeral or the deceased cannot be buried where they wished.
Last October, a source close to the group had told AFP that Nasrallah had been buried in a secret location, for fear Israel would target a large funeral.
Nasrallah led Hezbollah since 1992, and is seen as a transformative leader to the group, which grew from a local militant group into a regional paramilitary force with an influential political presence in Lebanese government.
The deeply religious Safieddine, a cleric with family ties to Nasrallah, had been widely viewed as the most likely candidate for the party's top job.
Safieddine, a member of the group's governing Shura Council, had strong ties to Iran after undergoing religious studies in the Islamic republic's holy city of Qom.
Source: Naharnet
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