Geagea Slams Hizbullah over Reports of Involvement in Battles in Syria
Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea expressed concern on Thursday over reports saying that Hizbullah fighters are deeply involved in battles on Syrian territories.
Geagea wondered if Hizbullah is seeking to make the Syrian crisis slip into Lebanon and inflict further division between the Lebanese.
Hizbullah has systematically denied sending fighters into Syria, though its leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged in October 2012 that party members had fought Syrian rebels but said they were acting as individuals and not under the group's direction.
Geagea called on Lebanese officials to demand Hizbullah to immediately stop sending fighters to Syria as it will have negative repercussions on the country.
“Hizbullah can't be labeled as a resistance anymore after the reports of its involvement this deep in the Syrian developments,” the LF leader said.
On Tuesday, media reports said that twelve Hizbullah members were killed in an ambush near Damascus.
Agence France Presse reported a day before that two members of Hizbullah were killed fighting alongside Assad forces in the Qusayr area of central Syria near the Lebanese border.
The opposition March 14 camp and Syrian rebels have repeatedly accused Hizbullah of aiding the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad militarily.
Syria's conflict, now in its third year, is believed to have killed more than 70,000 people.
On the publishing of a list of alleged witnesses in the Special Tribunal for Lebanon's probe into the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Geagea considered the matter a failed attempt to undermine the legal international means to implement justice in Lebanon.
The website of al-Mustaqbal newspaper, which is owned by Hariri's family, was hacked and its front page was replaced with the names of the “secret witnesses in the STL” by a group calling itself “Journalists for the Truth.”
Geagea called on security agencies to detain the culprits and protect the people who were named in the list.
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