Lebanon Takfiri Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir calls for demo
Hard-line Takfiri Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir has called on his supporters in Lebanon to hold a demonstration on Friday.
In an audio message posted online on Thursday, the radical sheikh urged his followers to “make a move this Friday.”
He also accused the Lebanese army and resistance movement Hezbollah of cooperating and conspiring against him.
According to Lebanese media, Assir’s family confirmed that the recording was his voice.
The audio message was the Takfiri cleric’s first public comment since he escaped from the southern Lebanese city of Sidon last month.
On Thursday, Lebanon’s Military Prosecutor Judge Saqr Saqr charged 37 people including Sheikh Assir and his two sons over the recent clashes between the radical cleric’s gunmen and the army forces in near Sidon, the Lebanese newspaper Daily Star reported.
Saqr said the group was “forming an armed ring with the aim of carrying out crime against people and their property, undermining state authority and harming the state prestige.”
Sheikh Assir is a staunch supporter of Takfiri militants fighting the Syrian government. Takfiris dismiss most of Islamic sects as infidels.
Lebanese security forces have been searching for the hard-line cleric since the end of deadly clashes between his supporters and army troops in Sidon last month.
The clashes broke out on June 24 after Assir’s supporters ambushed an army checkpoint, killing some 18 Lebanese soldiers. Dozens of his followers were also reported killed in the violence, which raised tensions throughout Lebanon and ended with the cleric on the run.
In the Thursday audio message, Sheikh Assir claimed that Hezbollah’s role in the fighting was “leadership, management and supervision to make sure the army carried out orders.”
Assir was unknown just two years ago, but he gained prominence as the spillover into Lebanon from the conflict in neighboring Syria has escalated. The cleric is believed to have hundreds of armed supporters in Sidon involved in the fighting.
Lebanon’s army has pledged to fight until it ‘finishes with’ the radical sheikh.
