Five detained over wartime Ehden massacre
Memories of the 1978 Ehden massacre returned to haunt a northern town Sunday after police
detained five men for questioning and released all but one of them hours later.
Security forces detained Butros Saba from the Batroun town of Kour as well as Antoine
Feghali, Hanna Aoun and Nabil Haykal, all from Kfar Abeida, only to release the men after
mediation efforts by Phalange Party president Karim Pakradouni.
State Prosecutor Adnan Addoum said the men were rounded up for questioning by the
assistant state prosecutor, Abdullah Bitar.
Addoum said the fifth man, Antoine Mikhael Youssef, remains in custody but would be
released in the next 48 hours.
Addoum said the men were “summoned” only to be told later that they were to make
themselves available upon the request of the assistance state prosecutor. But “they
were not under detention,” he added.
The civil war incident saw Lebanese Forces militiamen kill then-Minister Tony Franjieh,
along with his wife, daughter and some 30 others. Franjieh was the father of Health
Minister Suleiman Franjieh.
Pakradouni said that as head of the Phalange Party, he was calling on all parties
concerned, especially Franjieh, to “close the book on the civil war” once and
for all.
But the Maronite patriarch, who was visited by the families of the detained men Sunday,
said he was “astonished” the Ehden file was reopened after other similar cases
had been closed for years.
Indirectly referring to Suleiman Franjieh’s 1994 statement that he wanted legal
proceedings into the murder of his father dropped, Cardinal Nasrallah Butros Sfeir said
reopening the file was deplorable when “the people concerned have dropped charges
against the alleged murderers.”
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