Former Interior Minister Marwan Charbel told Asharq Al-Awsat on Wednesday that “big heads should start rolling” if the Lebanese authorities want to end the proliferation of weapons in Lebanon.
Charbel said political parties should promote stability and development projects in the country instead of providing protection to people using illegitimate weapons.
“The government should be decisive on this matter and launch a plan capable of ending the chaos caused by the spread of weapons through cooperation with all Lebanese” factions, he said.
The former minister explained that arms not falling under the authority of the Lebanese state have spread in the country since 1860.
At first, the use of such weapons were limited to isolated and security incidents. But they increased in number with the spread of Palestinians and militias during the Civil War. Illicit arms “re-emerged after the assassination of PM Rafik Hariri when some parties were accused of committing the crime,” he said.
But Lebanese authorities are incapable of limiting the use of such arms, which have turned their owners from vendetta seekers to people resorting to the use of illegitimate weapons in hopes of facilitating the smuggling of goods, a drug trade and the theft of vehicles.
During Eid al-Fitr holidays, the number of victims from such arms increased in Lebanon, particularly in the eastern Bekaa Valley when a vendetta left several innocent people dead.
Zeina Bassil Chamoun, founder of the Don’t Forget Us (Ma Tensouna) Movement told Asharq Al-Awsat that “there is no official data on the number of innocent people killed by stray bullets and proliferated arms.”
She said concerned security forces shy away from releasing transparent information on the matter to avoid showing their failure in handling it or be blamed by any political party.
"Ma Tensouna" was founded in July 2017 after a gunman killed Roy Hamouche, a student from the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik, during a car chase while on his way back home after celebrating his birthday with friends.
Chamoun explained that after conducting modest researches on previous crimes committed through illicit weapons, she found out that all criminals had been on the run or were released shortly after their arrest.
