by alaraby.co.uk — Joe Macaron — The Trump Administration quietly pulled a political and legal coup in Beirut in the short period between the Lebanese government’s declaration of a health state of emergency on March 15 and its banning of all flights on March 19 due to the coronavirus outbreak in the country. After six months of detention in Lebanon, the Lebanese-American citizen Amer Fakhoury was released and evacuated from Lebanon in a quasi-clandestine operation, one that reflected the leverage Washington has in Beirut and the vulnerabilities of a Lebanese government struggling for political and financial survival. Dubbed “the butcher of Khiam” by Lebanese media, Fakhoury was arrested as he arrived at Rafic Hariri International Airport in Beirut in September 2019. The General Directorate of General Security issued a statement on September 13 noting that during his interrogation, Fakhoury confessed to collaborating with the Israeli army and that he was subsequently referred to the Lebanese military’s office of the public prosecutor. Fakhoury, 57, was a senior warden in the infamous Khiam prison in south Lebanon that was run by the so-called South Lebanon Army, a militia group of Lebanese soldiers who had defected and then collaborated with Israel after its 1982 invasion of Lebanon. In 1985, the Israeli army turned the former Khiam military base into a prison camp that detained and tortured Lebanese who defied the Israeli occupation. Just before Israeli forces withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, Fakhoury fled to Israel then immigrated to the United States. He now holds both US and Israeli passports.
The controversy after Fakhoury’s arrest revolved around who removed his name from the blacklist of those convicted in Lebanese courts for collaborating with Israel, a list that is typically disseminated to all border entry points. It appears that his conviction in absentia in 1998 for 15 years of hard labor in prison was rescinded. Fakhoury’s family claims that Lebanese authorities “signed off” on his travel to Beirut. The most likely scenario might have been that high-level Lebanese officials were aware and played a role in removing Fakhoury’s conviction and arrest warrant from his criminal record to facilitate his visit. However, things went wrong the moment he landed in Beirut.