Beirut's military court has sentenced dozens of supporters of Christian and anti-Syrian parties arrested over the past two days, Al Jazeera satellite TV channel reported Thursday.
Sixteen defendants, mainly university students and two or three grade schoolers, are charged with "defamation of the head of state, harming the reputation of the Syrian army and of the public institutions," court sources told AFP.
The sentences reportedly range from five days to one and a half months.
No official figure has been given on the number of people arrested. Some Lebanese political parties have said that between 150 and 250 Christian and anti-Syrian militants were rounded up, most of them Tuesday night.
Ten other members of the outlawed Lebanese Forces (LF) Christian militia and of the Free National Current (FNC) were handed over to the military court, chief prosecutor Adnan Addum told the press.
They include a lawyer, a court source said, adding that seven other lawyers would be handed over to the military court in the coming hours.
More arrests were reported in Lebanon's anti-Syrian circles Wednesday night, said AFP.
For the first time, around 10 militants from Dory Chamoun's National Liberal Party (NLP) were arrested in Beirut, the party said.
Among the NLP members arrested Wednesday night were the leader of the party's student organization, Raymond Najjar, and a lawyer, Edouard Chamoun.
The latest arrests were triggered when a group of youths distributed flyers announcing "the death of freedom" in Lebanon.
Lebanese interior minister and interim defense minister Elias Murr said Wednesday that the army roundup of dozens of Christian and anti-Syrian opposition members was aimed at foiling an attempt to partition the country.
The hearing by the Beirut military court of several of those arrested began Wednesday night, and Murr told the LBC private Christian TV network that "the first results of the interrogations were beginning to reveal a plot to partition the country, by using the opportunity of a possible Israeli strike," the Daily Star quoted him as saying.
"It is a very serious project, which could have put the country in a very dangerous situation," he said.
Information Minister Ghazi Aridi, a close aide to Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, said in a newspaper interview on Wednesday that he had not been informed of the arrests.
"Intelligence services should have at least warned government members," he said.
Addum said most had been arrested on charges of "resistance to security forces and slogans harming a brother country, as well as banned gatherings."
He said interrogations had been conducted on the basis of arrest warrants, and that those of retired general and FNC coordinator Nadim Lteif and Toufic Hindi, a high-ranking official of the LF, were still going on.
The arrests were condemned by the Maronite Church, Lebanon's largest Christian community, and triggered a wave of protests.
According to the Daily Star, the Beirut and Tripoli bar associations urged lawyers to skip all court sessions on Thursday to protest against the crackdown.
Beirut Bar Association head Michel Lian called the one-day strike after an emergency meeting at the group’s headquarters in Adlieh.
The association warned of “illegal attempts … to harm democracy or lead the judiciary into a parody of justice.”
Calling for the “immediate” release of those arrested, Lian condemned attempts to involve the judiciary in political issues that he said did not concern it and over which it had no control.
The association’s legal aid department has appointed 19 lawyers to defend the detainees, said the paper.
Meanwhile, the Tripoli Bar Association also convened an emergency session, after which its president, George Mourani, called the arrests “a coup d’etat against democracy and the rule of law.”
However, the Amal Shiite resistance movement’s department of professional associations praised the arrests and condemned the Beirut Bar Association’s stance, the paper added – Albawaba.com
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