BEIRUT: The wife of slain policeman Ali Bazzal brought a bouquet of flowers to his funeral Friday, one day after his body was returned to the Lebanese Army.
“He used to always give me flowers,” Rana Fliti recalled tearily on the phone. “And today I gave one last bouquet to him.” Bazzal and more than 30 other policemen and soldiers were captured while battling Islamists in the town of Arsal last August. Although Al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, Nusra Front, published images of Bazzal being executed last December, Fliti, an Arsal native, was unconvinced of her husband’s murder.
In recent months she has repeatedly heard rumors that Bazzal is still alive and her hopes were kept afloat by the terrorist group’s unwillingness to provide a body. In recent weeks, Fliti said her family had been negotiating directly with Nusra Front members ensconced in the rugged hills surrounding Arsal.
Even after her family offered to pay money in exchange for Bazzal’s body, “Nusra absolutely refused,” Fliti said.
“My hopes increased that he was still alive, or maybe that [Nusra] wanted to negotiate with the government for something [bigger] in return ... They’re just a bunch of thieves, and nothing comes for free,” she said of the group.
She was contacted Thursday by a member of the media asking if the rumors about the return of her husband’s body were true.
“I was shocked. I hadn’t heard anything,” she said.
Fliti says that she only received confirmation after Bazzal’s body reached the military hospital in Beirut. She was forbidden from seeing her husband’s remains, which were identified both by DNA and by his mother, who recognized the tattoos on his shoulder, chest and back.
Bazzal was laid to rest Friday in his village, Bazzalieh.
Political and sectarian tensions that have flared within Lebanon since the outset of the Syrian civil war cast a pall over the somber proceedings, however.
Fliti, a Sunni from Arsal, married Bazzal, a Shiite from the neighboring village of Labweh, three years ago against their families’ wishes. While Arsal residents are predominantly Sunni and generally supportive of the Syrian uprising, Labweh is predominantly Shiite and many residents support Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside the Syrian regime.
With ongoing battles near the Lebanese-Syrian border, rockets have been periodically launched from the outskirts of Arsal toward Labweh, while Arsalis claim that a number of rockets that have struck their town were fired from Labweh.
Both prominent families in their respective communities, the Bazzals and the Flitis managed to make peace after the marriage. But following Bazzal’s execution in December, tensions soared once more.
Bazzal’s parents initially forbade Fliti from attending her husband’s funeral Friday.
“They told me that while I am still their daughter [in law] and they understand my situation, the people of Bazzalieh do not. They said they did not want any problems and did not want me to get hurt.”
After the spokesperson for the families of the kidnapped soldiers, Hussein Youssef, intervened, Fliti was allowed to attend the solemn proceedings. But Fliti hopes that the sectarian and political tensions that continue to beleaguer the northeastern Bekaa Valley will not overshadow her husband’s legacy.
“He is not a martyr from Arsal or from Labweh,” she said.
“He is a martyr for all of Lebanon. With his blood, I hope that his friends will come back peacefully to their homes.”
Around 25 policemen and soldiers are still being held captive by the Nusra Front and ISIS. – Additional reporting by Juana Baba
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