BEIRUT (Dispatches) – Lebanese Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi said he asked the authorities to prosecute the organizers of a symposium held by a banned Bahraini group in the capital Beirut, Anadolu Agency reports.
On Tuesday, Al-Wefaq Society held a symposium in Beirut to mark the anniversary of opposition protests that erupted against the ruling regime in Bahrain in 2011.
In a statement, Mawlawi urged the Public Prosecution “to prosecute the organizers and speakers at the symposium.”
He said the group targeted “the Bahraini authorities in particular and the Persian Gulf countries in general, and did not obtain a prior administrative approval in accordance with legal principles.”
The interior minister had previously prohibited the symposium from taking place earlier this week in a hotel in Beirut. However, organizers moved on with their plan to hold the event in another hall in the same area.
On December 12, Bahrain announced that it had lodged a “strongly worded” protest with the Lebanese government, saying Beirut was hosting a conference “hostile” to Manama.
A diplomatic crisis erupted in October between Lebanon and a number of Persian Gulf states, including Bahrain, following criticism of the Yemen conflict by then-Information Minister George Kordahi.
Kordahi angered Riyadh and its Persian Gulf allies by describing the Saudi-led war on Yemen as “futile” in an online show affiliated with Qatar’s Al Jazeera television network, adding that the Yemeni armed forces are successfully defending the state.
Saudi officials immediately responded by recalling the kingdom’s ambassador from Beirut and banning all Lebanese imports. The response was supported by Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
As Saudi pressure built on his country, Kordahi eventually announced his resignation in December 2021 and said he had decided to put Lebanon’s national interests above “personal” preferences.
Kordahi, a popular former Lebanese game show host, had made the critical remarks before being appointed as the information minister.
The decision by Lebanese authorities to ban Bahraini opposition forces from holding two events in the country comes nearly two months after Mawlawi ordered the deportation of non-Lebanese members of Bahraini Shia opposition group al-Wefaq from Lebanon.
The order came after the Bahraini opposition group held a news conference south of the Lebanese capital in early December last year, denouncing the Al Khalifah regime and presenting a documented report on human rights breaches in the kingdom.