‘Israeli’ Agent with US Citizenship Lifted Out Of Lebanon in Helicopter

By Staff, Agencies

An agent who used to torture Lebanese detainees at the ‘Israeli’ detention camp in Khiam, south Lebanon, who has dual Lebanese and US citizenships fled Lebanon via a helicopter that lifted him out from the US embassy in Awkar.

Amer al-Fakhoury was detained in Beirut on accusations of overseeing torture and murder at the prison during the ‘Israeli’ occupation of Lebanon, but has been spirited out of the country by helicopter in a blatant violation of the Lebanese sovereignty.

Earlier this week, a Lebanese military tribunal ordered that Fakhoury, 57, be released after it ruled too much time had passed since his inhumane crimes. It was not immediately clear whether he had been released, and a military prosecutor filed an appeal against the decision the next day.

The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, announced on Thursday that Fakhoury was “returning to the United States where he will be reunited with his family and receive urgent medical treatment”. His family says he has stage-four lymphoma.

Fakhoury was picked up from the US embassy in Beirut’s northern suburbs early on Thursday afternoon by a US Marine V-22 Osprey helicopter.

He was a member of the so-called South Lebanese Army, a militia that collaborated with the ‘Israeli’ entity during its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon starting in 1982.

He was accused of overseeing the notorious Khiam prison, where human rights groups say hundreds of opponents of the occupation underwent torture and scores of prisoners were martyred.

Fakhoury fled the country after the Islamic Resistance liberated south Lebanon, forcing an end to the ‘Israeli’ occupation in 2000. He moved to the US the following year, where he has since settled. He returned to Beirut last September, a year after an amnesty was passed for those who had collaborated with the Zionist regime during the occupation.