BEIRUT: Lebanon’s judiciary issued a new arrest warrant against the Arab Democratic Party chief Ali Eid after he did not show up for a hearing Saturday, a judicial source told The Daily Star.
The judiciary had withdrawn the previous arrest warrant, issued in February 2014 against the former MP, last week, after he had fled to Syria and remained on the run with his son Rifaat since last June.
Eid has been charged with aiding a suspect in a twin bombing that targeted the Al-Taqwa and Al-Salam mosques in Tripoli, killing 47 people and wounded dozens of others.
Military Investigative Judge Alaa Khatib issued Saturday’s warrant in absentia after Eid failed to show up in court and was not available at his official residence in Lebanon.
On Thursday, Khatib had ordered Eid, who has been at large since a security crackdown on militants in June, to attend the Jan. 10 interrogation or face an arrest warrant and trial in absentia.
Eid and his son fled to Syria when the Army started imposing a security plan that ended years of clashes between the mostly Alawite neighborhood of Jabal Mohsen, where Eid enjoys wide popularity, and the mostly Sunni Bab al-Tabbaneh.
Recurring violence in Tripoli took on an increasingly sectarian nature with the beginning of the civil war in Syria. Eid’s party is an ally of President Bashar Assad, while Bab al-Tabbaneh’s militants supported the Syrian opposition.
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