BEIRUT: Residents of the Nabaa building that housed five brothers arrested Tuesday in the murders of at least six people described the men as “nice” and “polite” neighbors.“
They’re good people and neighbors,” said Hussein Hajj, who lives in the apartment opposite Michel Tanielan’s. They were “good people with us, but with others, I don’t know ... They didn’t seem strange.”
The brothers have been identified as Michel, George, Aziz, Movses and Maurice Tanielan. A security source who spoke to The Daily Star Tuesday, said Michel has admitted to killing 10 people and attempting to kill two others.
One or more of the suspects are believed to have used stolen taxis over the past two months to commit murders, killing some of the victims inside the taxis, which were later set on fire. At least six people, including a Lebanese Army soldier, have been found dead on the outskirts of Beirut.
Most neighbors said they knew very little about the brothers.
Hajj said Michel lived alone on the fourth floor, but would often have “friends” visit.
“I know Michel. He didn’t work and was always home,” Hajj said, adding that “he was abroad [for a time] and came back.”
In Michel’s apartment, which appeared to have been ransacked, a photograph of a man on holiday – identified as Michel by Hajj – was hanging on the wall.
From the street, empty bird cages and drying clothes could be seen on the first-floor apartment’s terrace, where the other four brothers and their family lived.
“George worked on cars, Musa didn’t work because he’s injured from the war, Maurice only comes once in a while and Aziz has a taxi,” Hajj said.
Fakhreddine, a neighbor who asked to be identified by her family name only, also said the brothers were polite but not very talkative. “They would say ‘hello,’ but that’s all,” she said.
Fakhreddine, who bought her apartment five years ago, said the brothers were already there when she moved in. She’s never seen the inside of their apartments and used to “wonder” about the brothers’ occupation.
Michel, she said, is “a nice guy who likes to have fun, go clubbing and get drunk,” adding that there were often women and “people we didn’t know” visiting him.
She said the brothers often “fought with each other when they were drunk.”
Neighbors said a foreign woman in her 20s was also living in the first-floor apartment with her 7-year-old son.
They seemed not to be sure whose wife she was, as “sometimes she used to come to Michel’s, sometimes to George’s,” Hajj said. “George used to say the kid is his.”
They said the foreign woman, along with two other women and the brothers’ mother, were also taken into police custody.
Describing Tuesday’s raid, Fakhreddine said the police asked residents not to leave their apartments, but she heard from upstairs police asking, “Who do these guns belong to?” and later saw police carrying bags out of the building.
In the building’s narrow street, a man who asked not to be identified said he lived next to one of the brothers. He also said that the brothers didn’t say much but were good neighbors. “We didn’t see anything wrong with them. We would just say hello to each other, but they were nice.”
A shop owner further down the street said he was very surprised by the brothers’ arrest. “We didn’t know anything about these guys. Some people say that they’ve done a lot of [wrong] things, but not in this neighborhood.”
No comments:
Post a Comment