BEIRUT: The head of Lebanon’s powerful Shiite armed group Hezbollah warned on Monday evening against renewing on the same terms the mandate of the United Nations peacekeeping force in the country’s south.
The mandate of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, which expires Thursday, was extended last year with a slight modification that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah criticized at the time as “a violation of Lebanese sovereignty.”
He did so again on Monday.
“A foreign armed force that moves on Lebanese territory without authorization of the government and Lebanese army, without coordination with the Lebanese army, where is the sovereignty in all that?” Nasrallah said in a televised speech.
Under the modified mandate the peacekeeping force “is allowed to conduct its operations independently,” the UN resolution said.
The Security Council on Wednesday is to meet on extending UNIFIL’s mandate.
UNIFIL was first deployed more than four decades ago. It has routinely coordinated patrols and movements in its area of operations in the south with the Lebanese army.
But Lebanon’s government has also objected to the absence, in the UN resolution, of a stipulation that such coordination takes place.
On Monday, Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bouhabib met in New York with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to convey Lebanon’s position, the country’s official ANI news service said.
UNIFIL was set up in 1978 to monitor the withdrawal of Israeli forces after they invaded Lebanon in reprisal for a Palestinian attack.
It was beefed up in 2006 after Israel and Hezbollah fought a 34-day war, and the force, with more than 10,000 troops and naval personnel, is tasked with monitoring a cease-fire between the two sides.
Israel and Lebanon are still technically at war.
In December an Irish soldier with UNIFIL was killed and three colleagues wounded when their convoy came under fire in south Lebanon, a Hezbollah stronghold, near the Israeli border.
Days later Hezbollah handed over to Lebanese authorities a man suspected of being the main suspect, a security official said at the time. Hezbollah denied involvement in the killing of Private Sean Rooney, 23.
Considered a “terrorist” organization by many Western governments, Hezbollah is the only side not to have disarmed following Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war, and it is also a powerful player in Lebanese politics.
Hezbollah seeks restriction on UN’s Lebanon peacekeepers
https://arab.news/bsq6w
Hezbollah seeks restriction on UN’s Lebanon peacekeepers
- Under the modified mandate the peacekeeping force “is allowed to conduct its operations independently,” the UN resolution says
Two Tunisia columnists handed over three years in prison
- Mourad Zeghidi and Borhen Bsaies have already been in detention for almost two years
- They were due to be released in January 2025 but have remained in custody on charges of money laundering
TUNIS: Two prominent Tunisian columnists were sentenced on Thursday to three and a half years in prison each for money laundering and tax evasion, according to a relative and local media.
The two men, Mourad Zeghidi and Borhen Bsaies, have already been in detention for almost two years for statements considered critical of President Kais Saied’s government, made on radio, television programs and social media.
They were due to be released in January 2025 but have remained in custody on charges of money laundering and tax evasion.
“Three and a half years for Mourad and Borhen,” Zeghidi’s sister, Meriem Zeghidi Adda, wrote on Facebook on Thursday.
Since Saied’s power grab, which granted him sweeping powers on July 25, 2021, local and international NGOs have denounced a regression of rights and freedoms in Tunisia.
Dozens of opposition figures and civil society activists are being prosecuted under a presidential decree officially aimed at combatting “fake news” but subject to a very broad interpretation denounced by human rights defenders.
Others, including opposition leaders, have been sentenced to heavy prison terms in a mega-trial of “conspiracy against state security.”
In 2025, Tunisia fell 11 places in media watchdog Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) World Press Freedom Index, dropping from 118th to 129th out of 180 countries.
