BEIRUT: A Lebanese military prosecutor charged three Lebanese Army officers and 16 enlisted men in connection with last month's violent clashes between troops and Shiite protesters that left seven civilians dead, said a judicial report published late on Monday. Sixty civilians were also charged for their role in the January 27 riots - the country's worst internal violence in years.
The incident had raised tension in Lebanon, which is already divided by a deep political crisis, and threatened to spill over into a confrontation between the army and the country's most powerful group, Hizbullah.
The incident started as a protest against electricity rationing but escalated into deadly riots in the mostly Shiite area of a southern Beirut suburb
In his latest television interview last week, Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah called for a "swift and serious" investigation into the incident "so as to preserve the Lebanese Army and out of respect to the dead and their families."
Hizbullah officials refrained from commenting Tuesday on the judiciary's decision. A senior Hizbullah official told The Daily Star Monday his group "will comment in due time."
Military Tribunal Magistrate Jean Fahd charged two of the army officers and 11 soldiers with involuntary manslaughter for violating military orders by opening fire at protesters, and despite not having the intention to kill they "caused the death of six civilians and wounded several others," said the report.
The third officer and five soldiers were also charged with violating military orders but without causing casualties, the report added.
According to the report, two civilians were charged with carrying unlicensed weapons, and 58 others were charged with stirring riots and treating army troops "harshly."
Of those charged, no one was accused of killing Ahmad Hamza, a supporter of one of Lebanon's main opposition groups, Amal, who died from a gunshot wound in the riot. It was not yet known whether a soldier or a civilian fired the bullet that killed him, the military said.
Seventeen of the military members charged and seven civilians are in custody. The rest remain at large, the report said. If convicted, the 79 charged could receive up to five years of hard labor.
The January 27 shootings increased tensions in Lebanon, which is mired in its worst political crisis since the end of the Civil War. Parliament has been deadlocked for months over the election of a new president, divided between the US-backed majority and the opposition, led by Hizbullah.
Electricity cutoffs in recent months were extended for the first time to Beirut, where over a million Lebanese live. More than 15 years after the 1975-90 Civil War, the country's power grid still has not been fully restored, and protests have been common in opposition strongholds. - The Daily Star, with agencies
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