Lebanon rejects US demand to extradite five

Arab Monitor - Sito di informazione dal mondo arabo

Lebanon rejects US demand to extradite five

Beirut, 25 February - As was known today, during her recent visit to Lebanon this week US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice requested Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to extradite to the US four members of Hezbollah whom the US suspect of having carried out assaults against Americans in Beirut during the civil war. Three of the four, Imad Moughaniyeh, Hassan Esseddine and Ali Atwe, are said to have participated in the attack on the US Marines headquarter in Beirut in 1983, in which over one hundred Marines lost their lives. The fourth, Mohammed Hamadeh, had only recently returned from Germany, after serving a long prison term for possession of explosives. He is accused of having participated in the hijacking of a TWA airplane during which a US citizen was killed. For years Germany had refused to hand Hamadeh over to the US authorities, but then a few weeks ago released him unexpectedly from prison, to expel him immediately to Lebanon. The Lebanese authorities rejected the US request for extradition of the four on the grounds of a general amnesty law, adopted at the end of the civil war in 1991 and which covered incidents of which the four are being accused. The Lebanese authorities also rejected the request to hand over a fifth person, Wassef Hassoun, an American of Lebanese origin who deserted the Marines in 2004 and is now living in Lebanon.