Two Lebanese youths feared kidnapped are found dead
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Police yesterday found the lifeless bodies of two Lebanese youths feared kidnapped earlier this week, dumped near a road south of Beirut in the incident that has shaken Lebanon and sparked fears of renewed sectarian violence in this divided country.The bodies of Ziad Qabalan, 25, and Ziad Ghandour, 12, were found by police in the southern coastal village of Jadra, just north of the port city of Sidon, after police earlier yesterday received a phone call informing them of the location where they had been left.
Police said the bodies were swollen, suggesting they had been killed for at least 48 hours, but did not have immediate word on how they were killed.
A security official said they had been shot dead and that the bodies had signs of beating. Qabalan and Ghandour disappeared on Monday after leaving their homes in the West Beirut district of Wata al-Mseitbeh.
The police and security officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to release the information to the media.
Both Qabalan and Ghandour are Sunni Muslim and belong to the Progressive Socialist Party of Druse leader Walid Jumblatt. After news of their death, Jumblatt urged supporters to remain calm.
“Let us allow the judiciary and investigation to run their course so that we don’t fall into the trap of political rumors. Let us remove politics from this incident,” he said in a telephone interview with the local Future TV station.
The death of the two youths comes at a time of heightened political and sectarian tensions in Lebanon, where deep scars remain from the 1975-90 civil war that was marked by kidnappings and violent disappearances.
The Hezbollah-led opposition, which is pro-Syrian and pro-Iranian, has been campaigning with protests and sit-ins in Beirut since December 1 to oust the Western-backed government of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora. The tensions have turned violent on several occasions and clashes between rival camps in December and January claimed nine lives.
Photographs of the two youths’ frantic parents appeared on the front pages of yesterday’s local papers, along with calls for calm and unity to prevent new sectarian violence.
Earlier yesterday, some 30 pupils of the Wata al-Mseitbeh Government School which Ghandour attended, staged a half-hour sit-in outside the school to demand the twelve-year-old’s release.
“Let us learn. Let us live. The kidnapping of Ziad Ghandour is a crime against childhood,” read some of the pamphlets carried by the students. No group has claimed to have kidnapped the two so far.
The military and police had launched a nationwide manhunt for the two youths and set up checkpoints in and around Beirut, amid earlier false rumours that their bodies had been found.
Panic engulfed several neighbourhoods and prompted parents Thursday to rush to schools to take their children home.
In a statement shortly before the bodies were discovered, Saniora called the incident a terrorist act aimed at “sowing dissent between the Lebanese and dragging them toward civil strife.”
“It is a trap that the Lebanese will not fall into,” Saniora vowed.
President Emile Lahoud requested in a statement that all security measures be taken to prevent “any repercussions of this deplorable incident.” Lahoud said the situation in Lebanon “cannot bear such acts that harm stability and further ... increase tension and rekindle strife.”
Some papers have speculated that the two may have been abducted in revenge for the death of a 29-year-old Shiite Hezbollah supporter, Adnan Shamas, during January’s sectarian clashes. Media reports at the time suggested Shamas was killed by members of Jumblatt’s anti-Syrian PSP, and mourners at his funeral called for revenge.
But the Shamas family said the kidnapping had nothing to do with this and called on the captors of the Qabalan and Ghandour to release them.
