Former Lebanese Prime Minister welcomes sentence against Michel Samaha

Former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri welcomed Friday a judicial sentence handed down against former minister Michel Samaha, saying it corrected a previous rejected verdict by his political bloc.

On his Twitter page, Hariri, who is also the chairman of the political Future Movement, wrote: "The Cassation verdict against terrorist Michel Samaha rectifies the former reduced sentence which we utterly rejected.”

“Terrorist Samaha goes back to prison today, and that is where he and others who plan to murder innocent people and drag Lebanon into strife and civil war belong,” he added.

Commenting on the ruling, lawmaker and president of the Progressive Socialist Party Walid Jumblatt wondered whether the Lebanese judiciary would move to tackle all other corruption files as it had made with Samaha?

Lebanon's Military Tribunal sentenced former Information Minister Michel Samaha to 13 years in prison with hard labor on Friday, in the final verdict of his terror retrial, satisfying officials who had previously called for the court's dissolution, The Daily Star reported.

Samaha, originally sentenced last year to four and a half years in prison for plotting bomb attacks in the country, has already served about one-third of his new sentence.

In a decision handed down by the Military Court of Cassation, headed by Judge Toni Lattouf, Samaha has also been stripped of his civil rights, meaning he can longer vote or hold public office, as is normally the case with terror convicts.

Samaha was convicted on terrorism charges in May 2015 for smuggling explosives into Lebanon and planning attacks on political and religious leaders.

Source : MENA