Amnesty International has called on Lebanon to "immediately stop forcibly deporting refugees back to Syria" after dozens were returned to the war-torn country amid growing anti-Syrian sentiment.

On Friday security officials and a humanitarian source said Lebanese authorities sent dozens of Syrians back to the country, despite warnings they faced grave danger there.

Central bank chief Riad Salameh's brother, Raja, failed Tuesday to appear before a European judicial delegation as his lawyer submitted a medical report.

Last month, his brother appeared for two consecutive days and for the first time, before European investigators including French Judge Aude Buresi, through Judge Abu Samra, acting as a go-between. The judges were probing his personal wealth and allegedly suspicious financial transfers abroad.

Israel's army early Monday shelled a position belonging to a pro-Iran group in southern Syria near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, a war monitor said, the second such bombardment in days.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "Israeli ground forces" bombarded a location on the outskirts of Quneitra where fighters from the Syrian Resistance to Liberate the Golan are located, without reporting any casualties.

The French policy toward Lebanon has not changed and Paris is still carrying on with its proposal for resolving the Lebanese crisis: the election of Suleiman Franjieh as president and the appointment of Nawaf Salam as premier, multiple sources said.

A Paris court has sentenced a Lebanese-Canadian sociology professor to life in prison in absentia for the 1980 bombing of a synagogue in the French capital that left four people dead.

The court followed the prosecutors' request for the maximum possible punishment against Hassan Diab, now 69 and a resident of Canada, a decision that was met with silence in court.

Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblat has suggested that the re-establishment of ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran, and between Riyadh and Damascus, will have no impact on the Lebanese presidential file.

In crisis-hit Lebanon, lawyers have been increasingly alarmed by a recent ban from their union on media appearances not authorized by the syndicate, saying it amounts to political interference. Lawyers and human rights activists say the ban also violates laws on free speech and muzzles their accountability work.

The alarm was sounded again on Thursday, when the Beirut Bar Association interrogated for three hours Nizar Saghieh, a prominent activist lawyer, over violating the ban and appearing in the media without permission from the head of the association.

Lebanon has deported dozens of Syrians back to the war-torn country they fled from as anti-Syrian sentiment grows amid a dire economic crisis, security officials and a humanitarian source said Friday.

One of the Syrians deported was an army defector, a relative said, warning that "his life is in danger."

Marada Movement chief Suleiman Franjieh held a meeting last Wednesday in Damascus with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, accompanied by his wife, a highly informed Lebanese source said, despite recent denial of the visit by figures close to Franjieh.

Franjieh “tried to explore whether the Arab openness toward Syria would lead to Arab and Saudi acceptance of his election as president,” the source told the Nidaa al-Watan newspaper in remarks published Thursday.

French presidential adviser Patrick Durel has received from Marada leader Suleiman Franjieh signed written guarantees about his stance on different domestic and Arab issues, Nidaa al-Watan newspaper reported Thursday.

Durel conveyed the guarantees to Saudi Arabia, the daily said.