Muslim Scholars Committee Rallies at Military Court to Protest Tarras Rearrest

The Muslim Scholar Committee, a grouping of Sunni Muslim clerics, staged a sit-in Sunday outside the Military Court in Beirut in protest at the rearrest of Sheikh Bassam Tarras.

The road outside the tribunal building was blocked by the protesters for around an hour and traffic was diverted to alternative routes.

Refusing the continued detention of Tarras, a spokesman for the demonstrators said: “The way we are being treated is what creates and maintains terrorism, and if Sheikh Tarras' charge is supporting the Syrian people we are all with supporting this people.”

“We are advocates of the state project and we are with building a just state and a state of institutions, not a state of militias and corruption, but we want a just and fair state,” he added.

The cleric was re-arrested on Wednesday after a brief detention in connection with the August 31 Ksara bombing.

His new arrest is not linked to the bomb attack, al-Joumhouria newspaper has quoted State Prosecutor Samir Hammoud as saying.

“He was summoned by the Internal Security Forces Intelligence Branch for interrogation at the request of Assistant State Commissioner to the Military Court Judge Hani Helmi al-Hajjar, who went to the branch's headquarters to oversee the investigations,” the daily said.

Hajjar “ordered the arrest of Tarras pending further investigations in light of new information that was unveiled by Hajjar's interrogation of Tarras last week and the judicial writs that he issued as a result,” al-Joumhouria added.

Tarras' involvement in the new case has not been confirmed until the moment, Hammoud said.

“He might be guilty or innocent,” the prosecutor noted.

On September 15, the General Directorate of General Security said Tarras was briefly held in connection with the August 31 bombing over a meeting he held in Turkey with the attack's mastermind.

The brief arrest of Tarras, a former mufti of the Rashaya area, has created an uproar in Lebanon's Sunni community, especially among the ranks of the influential Muslim Scholars Committee and some Islamic activists.

The Ksara bomb attack left an elderly woman dead and at least ten people wounded.

The explosive device that was placed at a busy roundabout was targeted against AMAL Movement convoys that were carrying supporters to a rally commemorating Imam Moussa al-Sadr in the southern city of Tyre, AMAL leader and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said a day after the attack.

Other vehicles were hit by the blast shortly after AMAL buses passed by the roundabout, reports have said.