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Samir Kantar, Lebanon's longest serving prisoner who was freed by Israel in a swap, said on Thursday he had no regrets over the triple murder three decades ago that put him behind bars.
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PARIS/JERUSALEM (EJP)---The European Jewish Congress (EJC) strongly condemned the participation of Lebanese President Michel Suleiman in the jubilant celebrations held to welcome the return to Lebanon of Samir Kantar, a convicted triple murderer freed by Israel in exchange for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers.
In a statement, the European Jewish Congress president Moshe Kantor said: “We deplore the hypocritical stance of the Lebanese President, who just a couple of days ago preached unity and International cooperation at the launch of the Union for the Mediterranean in Paris. His support of Kuntar can only be viewed as condoning terrorism and more worrisome, a vote of confidence in Hezbollah’s murderous actions.”
He added: “The spirit of hopeful understanding voiced at the Union of the Mediterranean should not be flouted by stating one attitude when in the West and another when in the Middle East. It is imperative that all of the members of the Union for the Mediterranean jointly condemn acts of terror- both past and present- in all of their forms.”
| Samir Kantar, a triple murderer |
Samir Kantar, Lebanon's longest serving prisoner who was freed by Israel in a swap, said on Thursday he had no regrets over the triple murder three decades ago that put him behind bars. "I haven't for even one day regretted what I did," he said as he arrived at his family home in southeast of Beirut, where he was given a hero's welcome. Kantar, who turns 46 on July 22, was just 17 when he was sentenced to five life terms for a 1979 triple murder in one of the most notorious attacks in Israeli history. He was convicted of killing a police officer, a civilian and a four-year-old child whose head he was accused of bashing with his rifle butt, in a raid in the northern Israeli town of Nahariya. "I feel enormous joy because I have returned to the ranks of the resistance and to my family," he said with defiance, dressed in a Hezbollah military uniform.
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he bodies of the Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser were handed over to Israel on
Wednesday as part of a swap deal in which the Jewish state freed four
Hezbollah members captured during the 2006 war, Samir Kantar and the remains of some 200 Lebanese and Palestinian fighters killed over the years.
Kantar, a Lebanese Druze who was sentenced to five life terms for a 1979 triple murder that shocked Israel to the core, was the longest-serving Arab prisoner in Israel.
"Samir Kantar is a brutal murderer of children. Anybody celebrating him as
a hero is trampling on basic human descency," Israeli government spokesman
Mark Regev said.
Israel's Jerusalem Post newspaper has billed the festivities in Lebanon, where the released Hezbollah men were greeted by President Michel Sleiman and Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, as "a celebration of evil."
