Investigations into Arsal LAF killings come to a closure

      
Military Investigating Judge Fady Sawwan sealed investigations in the Arsal incidents that killed LAF officer Pierre Bachaalany and First Sergeant Ibrahim Zahraman and subsequently referred the file to the public prosecution.      

This as Military Investigating Judge Imad Zein continues investigations into the second incident where three soldiers were also killed in an attack on an LAF checkpoint in Arsal.           

Major Pierre Bachaalany and Adjutant Ibrahim Zahraman were killed when LAF troops were ambushed in the northeastern Lebanese border town on Friday February 1st, 2013, while trying to detain fugitive Khaled Hmeid, suspected of involvement in the 2011 kidnapping of seven Estonian tourists who were abducted in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley and held for nearly four months before being released in July that year.     

Khaled Hmeid was injured in the raid and subsequently succumbed to his wounds. Shortly after his capture around 80 gunmen adamant on avenging Hmeid's capture followed the LAF troops who reportedly were stuck on the road leading out of the town due to the accumulation of snow.         

The gunmen attacked the troops leaving Bachaalany and Zahraman for dead. The two were then taken alongside the remaining injured troops to the town’s municipality and paraded in a show of celebration.         

In May, three Lebanese Armed Forces' soldiers were also killed, after unknown assailants opened fire at them at 3 am dawn in the region of Wadi Hmeid on the outskirts of Arsal.         

The LAF took airtight measures in the region in order to identify the assailants who escaped towards the Syrian territories.           

The soldiers who were killed in Arsal were identified as: Ali Monzer, Mustafa Hayek and Mohamad Sharaf Eddine, and were taken to Beirut's military hospital.