BEIRUT: Lebanon’s interior minister said on Thursday that Uber driver suspected of murdering a British embassy worker last week had served time in prison, and he accused the company of not checking criminal records of its drivers.
The body of Rebecca Dykes was found strangled on Saturday next to a highway outside Beirut. Police detained a suspect on Monday and said the crime was not politically motivated.
Minister Nohad Machnouk said the driver had three priors on his judicial record involving drugs and had been imprisoned on that basis.
“This company, when it hires drivers, and lets them work within its organization, does not check their priors,” he said at a news conference.
An Uber spokesperson said all drivers the company uses in Lebanon are fully licensed by the government and must have a clear judicial record.
The spokesperson said a copy of the driver’s judicial record published by local media, showing no judgments against the driver, was accurate. Uber confirmed in an email that he was a licensed taxi driver with a clean background check.
Lebanon’s interior minister accuses Uber of not checking records
Lebanon’s interior minister accuses Uber of not checking records
Palestinian NGO condemns Israeli act of ‘revenge’ after prisoner abuse video
- A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military prison
RAMALLAH: A Palestinian NGO has denounced what it called an Israeli act of revenge after a video showed far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir overseeing the abuse of detainees in a military prison.
Just days before the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Ben Gvir held a tour of Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s Channel 7 reported.
In footage filmed on Friday and broadcast by the channel, around 20 police officers are seen storming a hallway leading to prison cells, brandishing their weapons and firing stun grenades.
They then pull five detainees from their cells, their hands tied behind their backs, forcing them face-down onto the floor.
The operation took place as a bill proposing the death penalty for Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorism awaited a final vote in the Israeli parliament.
“This is all part of ongoing displays meant to take revenge on Palestinian detainees,” Abdallah al?Zaghari, head of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, told AFP on Saturday.
“Everything Ben Gvir and the far?right government are doing affects not only the Palestinian people and prisoners in detention camps — it also impacts the global legal and human rights system,” he added.
Ben Gvir, known for his inflammatory rhetoric, is considered one of the most hard-line members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.
“It is simply a source of pride — arriving at a prison like this, a prison for terrorists, the vilest of the vile, seeing them like this,” Ben Gvir said in the video.
“I want one more thing: to execute them — the death penalty for terrorists,” he added.
Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on Saturday said the remarks were “a new war crime and a blatant challenge to international humanitarian law regarding prisoners.”
International rights groups have repeatedly warned of alleged abuse and mistreatment inflicted in Israeli prisons since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
While the death penalty exists for a small number of crimes in Israel, it has become a de facto abolitionist country, with the Nazi Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann the last person to be executed in 1962.
