Statement to clarify issue of Abbas Chouaib’s photo

The Lebanese Institution for Democracy and Human Rights asked the security apparatuses and judicial authorities to immediately conduct an investigation to uncover who was behind the publishing of the photo of one of the Lebanese hostages in Aleppo through LBCI, and who led the campaign launched against the institution.         

In a statement issued on Thursday, the institution explained that when the picture was received by an unidentified source claiming that it is that of a Lebanese hostage, the institution strongly refused to publish it on the media, instead, it directly hand it over to security apparatuses and army intelligence to verify it.             

The institution noted that it chose to follow peaceful procedures that preserve national security and take into consideration the feelings of the hostages’ relatives.  The institution expressed its surprise when LBCI published the photo and stated that it is the photo of a Palestinian detainee in Israeli prisons, and that its sender is Nabil al-Halabi, the institution’s director.            

The statement pointed that LBCI broadcasted news without revealing its source and said that publishing the photo to media aims at practicing political blackmail and destabilizing civil peace.