The killing of Mohamed Msallem shocked a nation. Two months on, Robert Fisk visited Ketermaya to find out what his death says about Lebanon
"They didn't hang him from a tree," the police chief insisted to me. "They put a butcher's hook through his throat and hanged him from an electricity pole – that one, over there."
And sure enough, just opposite the clean little mosque of Ketermaya, stands the rusting pylon upon which Mohamed Msallem met his terrible end. His victims – two little girls and their grandparents – lie in their graves a few metres away, plastic flowers blessing the grey earth, not far from the tomb in which half their family were buried almost 30 years ago, among the 50 victims of an Israeli air attack.....
The lynching on 29 April shocked Lebanon. A country that has shrugged off its civil war – and is trying to ignore the next Hizbollah-Israeli conflict – is supposed to have reverted to tourism, Crusader castles and Roman ruins and fine restaurants. But Ketermaya is an awful reminder of the incendiary pain that exists beneath its soft landscape.
Msallem was an Egyptian – which didn't help – but he was believed to have been a rapist as well as a murderer and the police, for reasons still to be explained, brought him back to the village less than 24 hours after the murders....."
"They didn't hang him from a tree," the police chief insisted to me. "They put a butcher's hook through his throat and hanged him from an electricity pole – that one, over there."
And sure enough, just opposite the clean little mosque of Ketermaya, stands the rusting pylon upon which Mohamed Msallem met his terrible end. His victims – two little girls and their grandparents – lie in their graves a few metres away, plastic flowers blessing the grey earth, not far from the tomb in which half their family were buried almost 30 years ago, among the 50 victims of an Israeli air attack.....
The lynching on 29 April shocked Lebanon. A country that has shrugged off its civil war – and is trying to ignore the next Hizbollah-Israeli conflict – is supposed to have reverted to tourism, Crusader castles and Roman ruins and fine restaurants. But Ketermaya is an awful reminder of the incendiary pain that exists beneath its soft landscape.
Msallem was an Egyptian – which didn't help – but he was believed to have been a rapist as well as a murderer and the police, for reasons still to be explained, brought him back to the village less than 24 hours after the murders....."
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