Beirut – “Arab Jerusalem”:
One of the oddities of the previous era that takes place day after day is that Outgoing President of the Republic, Michel Aoun He issued a special pardon for a person who has been found dead for more than a year. This “scandal” turned into a subject of ridicule among opponents of the Pact and the Free Patriotic Movement, who believed that what happened represented another aspect of Aoun’s failure and the misleading execution of the Pact.
The person subject to the amnesty is Muhammad Ahmad Al-Hassan, sentenced to 5 years in prison for the crime of drug trafficking and abuse, who died in Al-Hayat hospital in August 2021, following complications due to serious infections and liver and kidney failure, which was proven by an official report issued by the Shia faction in the internal security forces.
In an attempt to contain this “scandal” and absolve the Pact, the Minister of Justice Henry Khoury was forced to make two statements on the subject, explaining what happened and explaining how the decree was issued saying: “The request for special pardon presented by the concerned or by his representative is decided by the college of the pardon composed of three members by the High Council of the Judiciary, after the Public Prosecutor at the Court of Cassation has examined the file and presented its report on the aforementioned matter. on the two positions mentioned above, proposes to issue a specific amnesty decree if the two opinions are positive. Therefore, the role of the Minister of Justice in his proposal derives from the two positions mentioned above, namely the Amnesty Committee and the Discriminatory Prosecutor’s Office, in which no information emerged on the case of the late Muhammad Ahmed Al-Hassan, noting that the minister of Justice has no role in carrying out any investigation in this regard.
The Minister of Justice added to his first statement another statement in which he confirmed: “After communicating with the special committee for amnesty and the discriminatory prosecutor, he did not receive the file of the deceased convict, Muhammad Ahmed al- Hassan, during his study, indicating that the death had occurred before a decision was made, which required clarification ”.
Many Lebanese had tried to find out who was included in the special pardon issued by the Baabda Palace, before the images of the three decrees circulated on social media, bearing the signatures of the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice. , which were issued 10 days before the end of the presidential term, while their efforts have failed. Aoun and his son-in-law, Congressman Gebran Bassil, urged Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi to sign a decree to naturalize some 4,000 people, some of whom would pay thousands of dollars to obtain Lebanese citizenship.
