A delegation from the Bar Association from the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli withdrew on Saturday from a conference meeting in Tunis after the Syrian delegation there raised a poster of regime leader Bashar Assad and chanted slogans in his support.
The delegations were taking part in the opening session of the 24th Arab Lawyers' Union (ALU) which kicked off in the Tunisian capital on Friday.
The Bar Association in Tripoli announced in a statement that its delegation, headed by Mohammed al-Murad, withdrew from the opening session in protest against the “unethical” and “unprofessional” conduct of the Syrian delegates.
Lebanon had for decades been under Syrian hegemony, which ended in 2005 after the assassination of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Lebanese opponents of the Syrian regime accuse Damascus and its allies in Lebanon of being behind the murder. Syria's years of hegemony were marked with political and security interference in its neighbor's internal affairs and political tensions between them persist to this day.
