The Daily Star - Tensions ebb in north after Mawlawi freed, May 23 2012

By Hussein Dakroub

BEIRUT: An Islamist supporter of the Syrian opposition was released on bail Tuesday after a 10-day detention, a move that has defused tensions in Tripoli, but reverberations over last week’s killing of a prominent anti-Assad Muslim preacher and his companion by Lebanese Army soldiers in Akkar cast a pall of gloom over stability in north Lebanon.

Shadi Mawlawi, whose arrest on May 12 triggered deadly clashes in Tripoli between armed supporters and detractors of Syrian President Bashar Assad, received a hero’s welcome when he arrived in the northern city following his release.

A jubilant Mawlawi acknowledged his support for the 15-month-old Syrian uprising against the Assad regime, saying such support was a national duty. He claimed he was tortured during interrogation.

“I was arrested because I helped Syrian refugees. Indeed, this was in support of Syria,” Mawlawi told reporters upon arrival at Finance Minister Mohammad Safadi’s Social Services Center in Tripoli where he had earlier been lured and arrested by General Security agents.

Mawlawi rejected terrorism charges leveled against him as baseless, saying his arrest had been politically motivated because of his support for the Syrian revolution. He vowed “to continue the struggle for this revolution.”

Asked to comment on media reports about his confessions, he said: “Yes, yes, I confessed to many things but only under duress and any person would have confessed to those things when placed under such psychological pressure and torture ... I later disavowed my confession.”

Mawlawi, who wore a black headband bearing the Muslim profession of faith, said his release had given him “some confidence in the judiciary.”

Mawlawi, who met after his release with Prime Minister Najib Mikati at the latter’s residence in Tripoli, thanked the premier and Safadi for their solidarity with his case.

Soon after Military Investigating Judge Nabil Wehbi approved his release, Mawlawi was whisked away from the Beirut Military Court in a car belonging to Safadi’s center in Tripoli.

Wehbi, acting on Military Prosecutor Judge Saqr Saqr’s recommendation, ruled that Mawlawi, 25, should be released on LL500,000 bail, but was banned from leaving the country.

An atmosphere of euphoria, punctuated by fireworks, prevailed in Tripoli after news of Mawlawi’s release spread. Residents, including Muslim sheikhs and the city’s notables, gathered at Tripoli’s main Nour Square where tents had been erected to protest his arrest and demand the release of around 180 Islamists who have been jailed for more than four years without charges or trials.

Roads in Tripoli witnessed normal activity as security forces set checkpoints in the city’s main squares, while Army units deployed in areas which had been the scenes of bloody clashes between pro- and anti-Assad supporters last week, the state-run National News Agency reported.

Despite Mawlawi’s release, organizers of a sit-in at Nour Square pledged that the protest would continue until the detained Islamists were released.

The detained Islamists had been arrested on charges of fighting or aiding fighters during the 2007 armed clashes between the Lebanese Army and the Palestinian militant group Fatah al-Islam in the northern refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared in Tripoli.

Interior Minister Marwan Charbel denied that Mawlawi’s release had been linked to political pressure, and said the decision had been purely “judicial.”

“His charge was a minor one. I learned that he was helping Syrian refugees. If this is the reason, then many Lebanese must be held accountable,” Charbel said.

Saqr has charged Mawlawi with belonging to an “armed terrorist group” intending to carry out acts of terror inside Lebanon and abroad. Judicial sources said Mawlawi’s case was built on the suspicion that he was a link between Abdul-Aziz Atiyeh, a Qatari who donated money to rebels in Syria, and the man who received the money and sent it to the rebels.

Charbel said Atiyeh had been extradited to Qatar because of his health condition, but a Jordanian linked to the case was still detained.

Charbel warned of sectarian street clashes unless rival political leaders reached agreement to defuse tensions. “We have been living in an abnormal situation for nine months. Now, we are living on the edge of a volcano,” he said. He expressed fears of Lebanon’s partition if the current situation persisted.

Mawlawi’s arrest sparked gunbattles in Tripoli, where tension has been simmering over the Syrian uprising. At least 11 people have been killed and 70 others wounded in the clashes pitting gunmen from the Jabal Mohsen neighborhood against rivals in Bab al-Tabbaneh. While residents in the mostly Sunni area of Bab al-Tabbaneh support the Syrian revolution, residents in predominantly Alawite Jabal Mohsen back the Assad regime.

The unrest spread to Beirut Sunday following the killing of Sheikh Ahmad Abdul-Wahed, a prominent anti-Assad Muslim preacher, and his companion, Sheikh Mohammad Hussein al-Mereb, at an Army checkpoint in the northern province of Akkar. Two people were killed in Sunday’s street clashes between Future Movement supporters and their rivals in the pro-Assad Arab Movement Party headed by Shaker Berjaoui in the Beirut neighborhood of Tariq al-Jadideh.

However, the celebratory atmosphere in Tripoli over Mawlawi’s release was dampened by tensions in Akkar, where the families of Abdul-Wahed and Mereb stopped receiving condolences in their hometown of Bireh to protest the government’s failure to refer the killing of the two men to the Judicial Council.

The families held a meeting attended by Future MPs Khaled Daher and Moueen Mereibi to discuss pressing the demand to refer the case to the Judicial Council, while protesters cut off roads at the entrances of Akkar.

Mikati told reporters at his residence in Tripoli that he did not object to referring the case of the slain sheikhs to the Judicial Council. “In principle, I do not have an objection to that, but before presenting it to Cabinet, we should first consult with the justice minister and look into the issue from a legal point of view,” he said. Mikati added that the judiciary had taken the appropriate measures toward the soldiers who were present at the checkpoint in the village of Kwaikhat in Akkar.

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