The Lebanese judiciary on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against Shiite cleric opposed to Hezbollah, Sayyed Ali Al-Amin, for “meeting with Israeli officials” during his participation in a conference of religions held in Bahrain last year, which happened to be also attended by Jewish clerics coming from the occupied land.
Amin was the Mufti of Tyre and Jabal Amel before 2006, and took a political position in 2007 in support of former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, in the wake of the resignation of Shiite ministers from the government at the time.
He was expelled from the South in 2008, “by force of arms,” as he said in previous statements. Shortly after his participation in the interfaith conference in Bahrain in 2019, the cleric’s opponents launched a political campaign against him, while Hezbollah considered his move as “a serious insult to the legacy of religious scholars who had and still have a prominent role in resisting the occupation and rejecting normalization with it.”
The Supreme Islamic Shiite Council in Lebanon took a decision to dismiss Amin from his duties at Dar al-Ifta al-Jaafari, because he “worked to fuel internal strife among the Lebanese, and because of his normalization vision with the occupation.”
On Tuesday, the public prosecutor’s office in Mount Lebanon filed a lawsuit against Amin for “meeting Israeli officials in Bahrain”.
The lawsuit accuses the cleric of “meeting Israeli officials in Bahrain, continuously attacking the resistance and its martyrs, inciting strife between sects, sowing discord and sedition, and violating the Sharia laws of the Jaafari sect.”
In a telephone call with Amin, Siniora expressed his condemnation and denunciation of the judiciary’s move. “It seems that those, who claim concern for the independence of the judicial authorities, are working to strike the remaining reputation and image of the judiciary in Lebanon,” he said.
