A pro-Lebanese Forces engineer was reported missing on Wednesday after family members lost contact with him one day earlier.
Ramzi Irani, 35, the Lebanese University representative on the Lebanese Forces Student Committee, reportedly left his office in Clemenceau on Tuesday afternoon, but never arrived home to his wife.
“He called me at 4.30pm on Tuesday, like he usually does, to tell me that he was leaving work and on his way home,” his wife, Jessy Irani, said.
“He was supposed to pick up his friend from (Tabaris) and then my sister from the Phoenicia InterContinental Hotel at 5pm, but he never made it there,” she added.
Irani said her husband was not involved in any shady business, nor did he owe anyone money. She added that she was inclined to suspect intelligence agencies of being behind the disappearance, given her husband’s political affiliation.
However, she said both the army and the police had denied that he was in their custody.
“In any case,” she added, “whenever military intelligence would interrogate him in the past, they would send for him officially.
“He has never disappeared in such a manner before. These are things that used to happen before 1993,” she said.
Irani was last interrogated by military intelligence “about a year ago,” according to his wife.
Although no one saw Irani ride away in his car, the concierge in his office building saw him leave alone at 4.30pm, according to Salman Samaha, the student coordinator of the Lebanese Forces.
“We asked around in the neighborhood near his office building, but no one noticed anything suspicious,” he added.
Irani’s wife said: “For the past month, three men have been asking about him on the weekend, when we would be out.”
She added that they had managed to identify the individuals through the license plate numbers of their car, but “we don’t know any of them.”
Nevertheless, she lodged an official complaint with Beirut’s public prosecutor’s office, requesting that her husband’s disappearance be investigated.
Meanwhile, the Lebanese Forces issued a statement in which they “placed all information (concerning Irani’s disappearance) at the disposal of the authorities,” and called on anyone with information about the circumstances of Irani’s disappearance to make contact with his family.

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