Lebanese crooner-turned-fugitive militant Fadl Shaker surrendered himself to Lebanese authorities on Saturday after hiding in a Palestinian camp for over a decade, a Lebanese judicial official said.
Shaker, a popular singer born to a Palestinian mother and a Lebanese father, was accused of taking part in 2013 clashes in Sidon, south Lebanon, that opposed Salafist Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir and his supporters with the Lebanese military which left 17 soldiers dead.
While Shaker was a supporter of Assir, he denied involvement in the clashes and has been hiding in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh, the biggest Palestinian camp in the country where Lebanese authorities had no jurisdiction.
Assir was sentenced to death in 2017, then to 20 years of hard labour in 2021.
In 2020, Lebanon’s military tribunal sentenced Shaker to 22 years in prison for providing financial and logistical support to the “terrorist” Assir-led group.
“Fadl Shaker surrendered himself to the Lebanese army at the entrance to the Ain al-Hilweh camp as a prelude to concluding his legal case,” a judicial source told AFP on Saturday.
By longstanding convention, the Lebanese army stays out of the Palestinian camps and leaves Palestinian factions to handle security.
A source close to Shaker told AFP the singer “believes in his innocence and trusts in the independence of the Lebanese judiciary, which will do him justice this time”.
Shaker in July released a song while in hiding, which topped charts in the Arab world.
His video clip, filmed in Ain al-Hilweh, reached over 113 million views on YouTube.
str-nad/phz
© Agence France-Presse
