Lebanese Judge frees Arsal mayor, arrests 3 for latest attack on LAF

Military investigating Judge Fadi Sawan interrogated on Wednesday Arsal's Mayor Ali Mohammad Hjairi for three hours on suspicion of being involved in the attack on Lebanese Armed Forces soldiers in the region of Arsal last February.

Judge Sawan issued a decision to free al-Hjairi on a bail amounting to three millions LBP as per article NO. 11 of the Penal Court Procedures.

Prior to the decision, Judge Sawan obtained from caretaker Minster of Interior Marwan Charbel the permission to legally pursue al-Hjairi.

LAF troops were ambushed in Arsal 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.

Some security officials have said that Hmeid crossed the border into Syria over the past months to fight with rebels trying to depose Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Many in Arsal, a Sunni Muslim town, are sympathetic to Syrian rebels even as fears of a Syrian spillover are mounting in Lebanon; a country that has adopted a dissociation policy toward its neighbor's internal violence.

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 Major Pierre Bachaalany and Adjutant Ibrahim Zahraman for dead. The two were then taken alongside the remaining injured troops to the towns municipality and paraded in a show of celebration.

LBCI showed photographs of uniformed soldiers being held in the municipality building in Arsal.

Some of the soldiers had bruises, and others were bloody. Some residents in Arsal have said that the troops who were ambushed were in civilian clothes and using civilian cars.

They said they believed they were pro-government Syrian militiamen who crossed the border from Syria to capture Hmeid.

On another note, State Commissioner to the Military Court Judge Saqr Saqr filed a lawsuit against the Syrian fugitive Abdel Mawla Rifaei Mashhour accused of conducting the premeditated deadly attack against the Lebanese Armed Forces in the region of Arsal

The two Lebanese nationals Ahmed Hussein Mohamed and Iman Shmaytiyeh were also labeled as partners in crime pursuant to article 549 of the penal code.

The case and the arrested men were referred to the first Military Investigating Judge with a maximum sentence of death penalty.

The latest wave of deadly attacks against LAF soldiers in Arsal occurred on Tuesday May 28th, after unknown assailants opened fire at them at 3 am dawn in the region of Wadi Hmeid on the outskirts of Arsal, northeastern Lebanon.

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.

The Lebanese Army had set up a security cordon last Wednesday night around Farhat Hospital in Jeb Jennin, following reports stating that an injured Free Syrian Army soldier who is being treated there is suspected to be involved in the attack.

Later the army removed the cordon after the investigations revealed that the injured soldier has been at the hospital for one week, before the incident.