REPORT: Lebanon’s security apparatuses hunt down fugitives in Bekaa

Minister of Interior Nouhad al-Machnouq, General Security leader Major General Abbas Ibrahim and Director General of Internal Security Forces Major General Ibrahim Basbous carried out on Friday a tour in the Bekaa valley to inspect the implementation of the security plan.

Following the tour, Machnouq held a press conference in which he said that there was an impression that the Bekaa was not under the state's authority, adding that the security plan “proved otherwise.”

He also asserted that the security plan will continue in an attempt to announce the Bekaa region as free of fugitives, drugs and criminal activity.

Machnouq stressed that the dangerous fugitives fled to Syria, adding that the security plan is set to prevent them from returning.

“No one is above the law and fugitives will not remain on the run,” he concluded by saying.

Earlier, the joint forces from different security branches arrested 56 people in raids at the homes of several fugitives in the northern Bekaa Valley, seizing quantities of drugs, weapons and stolen vehicles.

The arrests come as members of the Lebanese Armed Forces, Internal Security Forces and General Security raided – for the second consecutive day – fugitives in the Bekaa villages of Brital and Hawr Taala.

A security plan had been launched in the Bekaa, since Thursday dawn, to crackdown on criminals in a region known to be a safe haven for car-theft gangs and drug dealers, as well as rings that kidnap in exchange for ransom.