The Egyptian Embassy in Lebanon on Friday condemned the lynching by an angry mob of its national Mohammed Msallem, the suspected murderer of four members of a local family in the Mount Lebanon village of Ketermaya. The Embassy condemned in a statement "the crime of killing the Egyptian national, Mohammed Salim Msallem, and mutilating his corpse after he became in the grip of justice."
The statement added that the aforementioned scene "contradicts with the civilized nature of the brotherly Lebanese people." The Embassy stressed "its condemnation of the gruesome crime committed against the four innocent Lebanese citizens."
Lebanese officials on Friday denounced the lynching of Msallem by an angry mob who hung his body on a pole with a butcher's hook in a crime described as barbaric. "Whatever the feeling of the villagers, nothing can justify this type of reaction," Justice Minister Ibrahim Najjar said. "We have the names of at least 10 people who took part in this horrible crime and the courts must now do their work," he added, according to AFP. "No state of law can condone what happened."
The lynching took place on Thursday in the village of Ketermaya, 25 kilometers southeast of Beirut, as police escorted the prime suspect in the murder of an elderly couple and their two granddaughters, aged seven and nine, to re-enact the crime. A mob of angry villagers surrounding the police vehicles, dragging out the suspect, and beating and stabbing him to death.
They then stripped him down to his underwear and socks and dragged him through the streets as villagers stomped on his bloodied corpse. His body was also paraded on the bonnet of a white Mercedes before being hoisted on to an electricity pole with a butcher's hook through his chin.
He was left there for about a half hour as onlookers clapped or took pictures with their mobile phones and village women ululated.
