Syrian interior minister, Mohammed al-Shaar, has been formally accused of "genocide", "ethnic cleansing" and "political assasination" in Lebanon during the 1980s.
A Lebanese lawyer filed a lawsuit against the minister on Monday for his part in the killings of hundreds of people in the Lebanese northern city of Tripoli.
The case brought against al-Shaar claims that on December 19, 1986, at the height of the civil war in Lebanon, he and his accomplices "killed and slaughtered more than 600 poeple from the Tebanneh district [of Tripoli]."
The Syrian minister is currently in hospital in Beirut after a suicide bomb in his ministry in Damascus left him with minor injuries. Activists in Syria claim those officials still part of the regime are responsible for the killings of thousands across the country.
