BEIRUT: Al Qaeda’s Syria franchise yesterday released a video showing nine Lebanese army and police hostages it said could pay the price for the Shia group Hezbollah’s military intervention in the Syrian conflict.
The Al-Nusra Front video, entitled “Who Will Pay the Price?”, shows the abducted members of Lebanon’s security forces condemning Hezbollah, which has fought alongside President Bashar Al Assad’s regime against rebels.
More than 35 Lebanese police and soldiers were captured in unprecedented clashes on August 2 between the country’s security forces and jihadists who had crossed the border from Syria.
At least 15 soldiers and 14 policemen are still being held by three groups: Al-Nusra Front, the jihadist Islamic State (IS) and Jaish Al Islam (Army of Islam), a Syrian Islamist rebel movement.
A captured Sunni Lebanese soldier, Ali Sayyed, was beheaded by IS militants whose sympathisers released an online video last week purporting to show the atrocity. In the footage released yesterday, one hostage sitting with the others in front of a jihadist banner asks why he must pay the price for Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria.
After Sayyed was beheaded, relatives of other hostages blocked roads in Lebanon to try to pressure the government to negotiate for the release of their loved ones. Lebanese officials have rejected holding talks on a possible prisoner swap.
AFP
