Three supporters of anti-Syrian Lebanese Christian movements appeared Saturday in military court, as authorities vowed to continue arrests to rein in outlawed groups.
On Monday, Parliament will discuss the crisis, in a session expectd to shore up government authority after it was shaken by the unauthorized arrests.
The defendants, Khattar Wadih Msallam, Mansur Eid Fadel and attorney Ziad Aswad, are charged with "violence against the security forces," court sources said, cited by AFP and press reports.
Aswad was also accused of distributing tracts "harming the reputation of the military institution."
The three were arrested Thursday after heated exchanges with anti-riot police during a demonstration against an army intelligence services crackdown since Sunday. The scuffles left several protestors injured.
The mass arrests of followers of the dissolved Lebanese Forces (LF) militia of warlord Samir Geagea, who is serving life sentences for wartime political assassinations, and those of the Free National Current of exiled General Michel Aoun, have sparked fears the regime is becoming authoritarian.
General prosecutor Adnan Addum insisted Saturday that just 11 militants arrested in crackdown were still being held at the defense ministry, notably Toufic Hindi, an advisor to Geagea, and retired general Nadim Lteif, coordinator in Lebanon of Aoun's group.
All eleven will be handed over to the courts either Saturday night or Monday morning, the general prosecutor said.
Meanwhile, in a newspaper interview on Saturday, Druze overlord Walid Jumblatt, one of the leading critics of the army crackdown, denounced intelligence services as "a new militia" for the mass arrests and beating militants.
The word "militia" in Lebanese political language also conjures up images of the country's bitter 1975-1990 civil war, when different parts of the country were effectively ruled by sectarian militias, said AFP.
The security dragnet has also been strongly criticized by Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and many ministers who complained that the operation was carried out behind their backs.
Following a heated cabinet session on Thursday, the government came up with "compromise" resolutions, praising the army for maintaining civil order while issuing a reminder that the council of ministers ruled over all state institutions.
Observers have said that the government protest yielded a win-win situation, where the army was given free hand in cracking down on anti-Syrians while the government restored its position as a reference framework for all policies, and the upper hand over all institutions, including the army and its intelligence apparatus.
The security forces maintained a stern tone, as the Central Security Council -- which groups the heads of the country's military, security and intelligence agencies -- warned Aoun and LF loyalists not to conduct political activities because they were dissolved or unlicensed groups.
There was an apparent positive response, as streets remained calm on Saturday, and a strike called for by Aoun did not take place.
Although the situation seemed to have been calmed down for the time being, observers predicted the issue would move to Parliament on Monday.
The Daily Star said Sunday that Hariri was moving the battlefield to Parliament to ensure there would be no infringement on his power in the cabinet.
On Friday, said the paper, Hariri held a series of meetings at his Koraytem residence, receiving top politicians and security officials, but no official comments or statements of note were released afterward.
A one-hour meeting grouped Hariri, Jumblatt, ministers Marwan Hamade and Ghazi Aridi, where they discussed “general developments” in the country.
On Friday, the court said that 23 of those arrested were referred to the military prosecutor for "harming Lebanon's relations with a sisterly state," a reference to neighboring Syria, the effective power broker in the country.
It said 18 more, including the three standing trial Saturday, were charged with "distributing tracts harming the reputation of the Lebanese and Syrian army and for violence against security forces."
Christian politicians and religious leaders have been among the most critical of Syria's political dominance over its smaller neighbor. Syria has stationed thousands of troops in Lebanon since 1976, in the early part of the country's civil war.
Aoun, a former Lebanese prime minister, declared a "war of liberation against the Syrian occupier" in 1989 before a Syrian-led military offensive forced him into exile in France a year later – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
