Azaz Diaries of Detention: Sakr, Erdogan, and Abu Ibrahim
►http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/azaz-diaries-detention-sakr-erdogan-and-abu-ibrahim
Munzer recalled a day when Abu Ibrahim visited them, and said, “[Lebanese MP] Okab Sakr was a few meters away from you. He came and gave me $50,000 to cover your expenses. I told him we had other demands, but he – and I do not hide this from you – put the money on the table and left.” So, where is Abu Ibrahim today? The young man answered, “We heard he was killed in a battle. We never saw him again.”
Munzer said, “I was there when Abu Ibrahim received a phone call. The caller told him she was a secretary from [Lebanese] Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s office. The purpose of the call was to try to push the case forward, but Abu Ibrahim told her: I cannot talk in details with you. I must ask Mr. Okab Sakr and then we’ll see.”
This corroborated a June 2013 Al-Akhbar article under the title “Azaz Kidnappers Find Friends in Hariri and McCain.” Back then, Interior Minister Marwan Charbel was quoted as saying that Saad Hariri was negotiating directly with the kidnappers. Charbel said, “Hariri called me and told me about a list of female prisoners in Syrian prisons, at one stage of the negotiations. When we were in Turkey, the kidnappers told us that they sent the list to Hariri, but we did not know about it, bearing in mind that Hariri was angry with the kidnappers for delaying the release.”
Charbel saw Hariri’s efforts as being positive and helpful, but many, including the relatives of the hostages who protested on Beirut’s streets for months, saw Hariri’s role as negative. “For us, he and Sakr were among the enablers of the kidnapping, to say nothing more,” they said. Perhaps time will shed more light on these mysterious details in the Azaz hostage crisis.
