Lebanon’s Military Court Tuesday postponed the trial of radical preacher Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir until April, in the sixth adjournment without progress since his arrest in 2015.
The trial date was moved to April 4 to allow time for a new lawyer to be assigned to Assir. His former legal representation had refused to attend proceedings, claiming evidence they had submitted to the court had been ignored.
The lawyers had also demanded that members of the Hezbollah-affiliated Resistance Brigades be tried for initiating clashes with the Lebanese Army in 2013.
Assir is charged with leading gun battles against the Army in 2013 in Abra, east of the southern city of Sidon, during which 18 soldiers and some 40 militants were killed.
In 2014, a military judge sought the death penalty for Assir and 56 others, including former pop singer Fadl Shaker, over their alleged involvement in the Abra clashes.
Assir was arrested at Beirut’s Rafik Hariri International Airport in mid-August 2015 while attempting to flee to Nigeria via Cairo using a fake Palestinian passport. He had been on the run for two years.
Mohammad Abdel-Rahman Shmandar, Shaker’s brother, recounted the events leading up to the events at Abra, rejecting the claims against his brother and consistently denying his involvement.
“Fadl does not know how to bear arms,” he said in response to the head of the military court Hussein Abdallah’s queries. “He doesn’t even know how to beat someone with a stick.” Shmandar swore that his brother had never committed any crimes in Lebanon and that he had not participated in the Abra clashes.
When asked about his son Abdel-Rahman, who was formerly Shaker’s bodyguard, Shmandar’s became subdued. “I was not able to see him, but I knew he had been killed,” he said.
Shmandar recalled how during the fighting he had made a series of calls to ensure his brother’s safety, moving him from the shelter he had shared with Assir to a safe neighborhood in the adjacent Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian camp. Shmandar’s son died in unknown circumstances after leaving his house to check on Shaker.
“[My brother and I] stayed in contact for five or six months. I tried during that time to convince him to hand himself over,” he said. “Sometimes he would say yes sometimes he would refuse. Fadl has a fickle personality, we would argue. So I turned myself in ... while he stayed in Ain al-Hilweh.”
Also Tuesday, the court questioned Baha Brounawi and Bilal Bader, both of whom denied being a part of Assir’s group or participating in the Abra battles.
The defense’s testimony will be heard before the sentencing is issued on April 4.
