State Prosecutor Judge Ghassan Oueidat on Monday referred Mount Lebanon Prosecutor Judge Ghada Aoun to the general commission of the Court of Cassation after she failed to appear before him over a libel complaint filed by Speaker Nabih Berri and his wife Randa.

According to state-run National News Agency, Oueidat charged Aoun with “stirring sectarian sentiments, inciting conflict among the elements of the nation, libel, slander and abuse of power,” referring a copy of the lawsuit to the judicial inspection commission.

The late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's great-nephew has no links with the Islamic State group but was sent back to Iraq as part of a political deal with Lebanese authorities, his lawyer said.

Bushra al-Khalil told The Associated Press that her client, Abdullah Yasser Sabaawi, was living in Yemen in June 2014, when IS fighters massacred hundreds of Iraqi troops in central Iraq. She said Lebanese authorities handed over Abdullah to Iraq on Friday despite the fact that he had been registered as a refugee in Lebanon and denies any link with the 2014 massacre.

The head of Hezbollah’s Loyalty to Resistance parliamentary bloc, MP Mohammed Raad, on Sunday announced that his party knows whom it wants for president.

Lebanon has extradited a man said to be a grandnephew of Saddam Hussein to Iraq, where he is accused of involvement in a massacre by the Islamic State group, a security source said.

Speaker Nabih Berri has reiterated his warning that the country cannot bear months of presidential vacuum, seeing as Lebanon's "dire" situation is much worse than it was in the vacuum period that preceded Michel Aoun's election.

Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Friday openly announced that his party wants a new president for Lebanon who “would reassure the resistance.”

“We do not want a president who would provide a cover for the resistance, because it does not need protection. We want a president who would not stab the resistance in the back,” Nasrallah added, in a televised address marking Hezbollah’s “Martyr Day”.

The United Nations Friday cautioned that millions of people displaced by conflicts and persecution in the Middle East risk "extreme hardship" as winter approaches.

UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, said there was a dire need for more funds to support many displaced people at a time when the coming northern hemisphere winter is expected to be "far more challenging than in recent years". 

The Council of Catholic Patriarchs and Bishops in Lebanon on Friday announced that it will seek a national dialogue in the country, as it stressed that the election of a president remains the top priority.

“There is no priority that is higher than the priority of electing a president and we call on MPs to elect a president immediately,” the Council said in a statement that followed a meeting.

The opposition parliamentary blocs are mobilizing to confront what they consider a violation of the constitution as Speaker Nabih Berri prepares to call for a legislative session amid a presidential vacuum, a media report said on Friday.

Berri will schedule the session within two weeks, Asharq al-Awsat newspaper reported.

The reports about a U.S. warning against bringing Iranian oil into Lebanon were confirmed after caretaker PM Najib Mikati met with visiting USAID chief Samantha Power in the presence of U.S. Ambassador Dorothy Shea, ad-Diyar newspaper said on Friday.

“During the meeting, Mikati was informed that the U.S. considers all Iranian oil as subject to sanctions, and that’s why he has in principle decided to shelve the grant if there won’t be an exemption from the U.S. Treasury similarly to what’s happening with Iraq,” the daily added.