The head of the Arab Tawhid Party, Wiam Wahhab, wrote a post on his “X” account, in which he attacked Prime Minister Nawaf Salam over the delay in publishing the amnesty decree, linking this to the file of extraditing an officer.
Wahhab said: “President Salam is delaying the publication of the amnesty decree until the crime of handing over the general is committed,” asking: “Why does Salam not demand the return of the Lebanese head of Homs intelligence who defected from the army and is accused of terrorist crimes?”
Wahhab concluded his post by asking Salam a direct question, saying: “Do you consider yourself a head of government or an employee subordinate to Sharia law?”
Wahhab’s position comes days after the House of Representatives approved, on August 12, the amended general amnesty law, in a step that is supposed to include a number of convicts and detainees and address judicial and prison files that have been pending for years. The law is the first broad general amnesty passed by Lebanon since 1991, and since its introduction, it has sparked a broad political and legal debate about the groups covered by it and the mechanisms for its implementation.
In parallel, the file of extradition of wanted persons and officers between Lebanon and Syria has returned to the forefront, especially with the continued search into the files of people whom Damascus is demanding to extradite. The Syrian authorities had previously asked Beirut to hand over officers from the former Syrian regime present in Lebanon, while dealing with these files remained linked to Lebanese judicial and legal procedures.
Wahhab’s post today was not the first of its kind in this file, as on August 17, he called on Salam to stop what he described as “pressure to hand over the Syrian general who was demobilized 13 years ago,” warning against holding him responsible for what he might be exposed to after his handover.
On the other hand, Wahhab raised in his new publication the file of a security official in Syria of Lebanese origins who defected from the Lebanese army, referring to Abdullah Shehadeh, who was previously reported to have defected from the army in 2014 and later assumed a security position in Homs and the Syrian coast, placing this file in opposition to the file of the officer required to be extradited to Damascus.
Thus, Wahhab moves his debate with Salam from the issue of publishing the amnesty law to a broader file related to the government’s approach to extradition requests between Beirut and Damascus, amid the legal and political sensitivity surrounding this file.
