Wife appeals for LF man’s return
Family beg for news on Ramzi Irani’s whereabouts
Amid appeals for calm by investigators, the family of Ramzi Irani, a pro-Lebanese Forces
engineer who disappeared last week, offered an impassioned plea for mercy from possible
kidnappers Monday.
“Please think of his children who keep on asking about their father’s prolonged
absence,” begged Irani’s wife, Jessy, before breaking down in tears during a
meeting with reporters.
“Today it’s been so hard,” she said. “You would be hoping that, come
Monday, you would receive some bit of news. But then, you hear nothing,” she added.
Ramzi Irani, who represents the Lebanese University on the LF Student Committee,
disappeared last Tuesday after leaving his office building in Clemenceau sometime around
4:30pm.
No party has claimed responsibility for his abduction and both the police and the army
have denied his being in their custody.
Family members and LF spokesmen are grappling to find a motive for Irani’s mysterious
disappearance.
“If you can figure out why he was kidnapped, you would know who did it,” said
Salman Samaha, the LF’s student coordinator.
Outside the Irani household, a few dozen LF supporters distributed flyers to motorists and
passers-by which asked: “Where is Ramzi Irani?”
“This is not a case of illegal detention, but kidnapping,” said Eliano al-Mir,
who heads the professionals’ component of the LF Student Committee.
State Prosecutor Adnan Addoum declined to draw a link between Irani’s disappearance
and his political affiliation with the LF, which was banned in 1994.
“The investigation is secret and his disappearance could have more than one
reason,” Addoum told reporters at Beirut’s Justice Palace.
The state prosecutor called for “not overdramatizing the case” and said that a
“waiting period of a few days was needed to clarify the situation.’
Addoum said he was overseeing the investigation himself and would “reveal any
breakthrough in the investigation.”
But he added that the legal authorities “were in possession of some information that
could not be made public.”
Meanwhile, family members and friends have been keeping the family’s apartment busy
and Irani’s two small children away from the agonizing scenes of their mother crying.
“We told them that he’s away on a trip,” a family member explained.
“But the other day, his five-year-old daughter saw her mother crying on television.
They’re really tense and confused.”
Jad, 2, attempted to send his father a message through one of the local television
stations.
“I am waiting for you,” he piped through the microphone after some prompting.
M.H.
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