‘Tea’ and ‘Black Suits’ Prevail in Heated Parliamentary Committee Meeting
Hizbullah and al-Mustaqbal MPs wrangled on Monday at the human rights parliamentary committee meeting which witnessed curses, threats and counter accusations.
The committee was scheduled to discuss a report by Internal Security Forces chief Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi on the alleged involvement of the Syrian embassy in the disappearance of Syrian opposition activists in Lebanon.
Lawmakers from the March 14 opposition, which al-Mustaqbal is part of, accused the parliamentary majority of seeking to turn the session into a “trial” over Rifi’s information while the Hizbullah-led forces said the opposition was angered by remarks by General Prosecutor Saeed Mirza that members of the Jassem family had dropped their case in the kidnapping.
Around 60 MPs, Mirza and Minister Shakib Qortbawi and Marwan Charbel participated in the heated session which was also intended to discuss the fate of Syrian opposition member Shebli al-Aisamy and Middle East Airlines engineer Joseph Sader.
According to Rifi’s report, the four Jassem brothers were kidnapped in Lebanon by members of the Syrian embassy staff and an Internal Security Forces guard unit headed by Lt. Salah Hajj in February.
But Mirza informed lawmakers that the Jassem family dropped its lawsuit claiming the four brothers were not kidnapped. He also said there are no judicial cases in the disappearances of al-Aisamy near Aley in May or Sader, who was kidnapped in 2009 near Beirut airport.
This drew the ire of March 14 MPs who began questioning him on how the prosecution could drop such a case when telecommunications data as mentioned in Rifi’s report proved that the embassy was involved in the disappearances.
At this point, Hizbullah MP Nawwaf Moussawi criticized the opposition lawmakers for laying doubts on the investigation of the judiciary and recounted how the issue of false witnesses in ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s assassination case was fabricated.
Moussawi’s comment angered al-Mustaqbal movement MP Ahmed Fatfat who said the Hizbullah-led forces had stirred the false witnesses case when they sought to topple ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s government and were now shying away from the subject after they became part of the new cabinet.
Hizbullah MP Ali Ammar snapped back in anger: “You are conspirators … you are the team of (Jeffrey) Feltman and Condoleezza (Rice) and the killers of children and women during the July war.”
The two lawmakers also bickered on what became known as “black shirts” when groups of Hizbullah members wearing black shirts deployed in the streets of Beirut earlier this year after the collapse of ex-Premier Saad Hariri’s cabinet.
Ammar also accused Fatfat of being the “tea server” in reference to the serving of tea to Israeli soldiers by members of the Internal Security Forces at their barracks in the southern town of Marjayoun during Israel’s 2006 aggression on Lebanon. Fatfat was acting interior minister at that time.
The Hizbullah MP was about to toss a water bottle at Fatfat when other lawmakers calmed him and took him out of the hall. He returned for about seven minutes and then left the parliament building.
The head of the parliamentary committee tried to calm the situation and MP Ghassan Mkhaiber recommended that the judiciary follow up on the kidnappings in Lebanon.
The session was adjourned and the MPs of each party began making statements to reporters accusing the other side of seeking to stir trouble. MP Marwan Hamadeh said the committee hasn’t approved any measure while Fatfat unveiled that Ammar threatened him “to sort out their problem on the street.”
“The session was full of curses and that’s because of Ammar’s attitude,” Fatfat told reporters.
But MP Nawwar al-Sahili defended Ammar by saying that the Hizbullah lawmaker meant he wanted to discuss the issue outside and not during the meeting.
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