January 30, 2010 - The Daily Star - Lebanon Majdel Anjar imam faked abduction to dodge debts

Majdel Anjar imam faked abduction to dodge debts

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

BAALBEK: A Lebanese sheikh staged his own kidnapping allegedly in a desperate bid to secure a ransom and repay debts, a security official and his neighbors said Friday. Police arrested Sheikh Mohammad Majzoub, the prayer leader at a Sunni mosque in the town of Majdel Anjar, for “plotting a fictional kidnapping,” the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Majzoub’s car had been found late Tuesday with its engine still running and hazard lights flashing on a side road of the town located in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley.
The imam’s white turban was found lying on the ground in a nearby street.
But police found Majzoub, who is in his 20s, in a house near Majdel Anjar on Thursday night, with his beard and hair shaven off but otherwise unharmed.
The cleric’s neighbors told AFP the young sheikh had been having financial troubles and in debt.
His “kidnapping” had prompted a major search operation in the eastern Bekaa, where sectarian ties are tense between Sunnis and Shiites.
A news report on Thursday said Majzoub has been in dispute with radical groups in the nearby village of Kamid al-Loz since the time that he was the imam of that town.
The dispute made him leave Kamid el-Loz to settle in his hometown of Majel Anjar, the report added.
Urging residents to remain calm, parliamentarians and officials had met with the Lebanon’s grand mufti – the country’s highest ranking Sunni cleric – and called on the police to find the sheikh immediately to preserve “civil peace.”
The sheikh was now being grilled by investigators, said the security official. – AFP, with The Daily Star