Luqman Selim… Justice is absent

Today, the family of the Lebanese thinker and researcher Luqman Selim commemorates the second anniversary of his assassination, with a number of activities that are held over a period of three days, interspersed with national and cultural activities. Luqman Selim was one of the prominent cultural figures in Lebanon, as he was known for his strong opposition to Hezbollah. Two years after his assassination in an area of ​​southern Lebanon under the influence of the party, no indictment was issued by the Lebanese judiciary, in a country where impunity has become part of the public scene, as Luqman’s sister, publisher Rasha al-Amir, told Asharq Al-Awsat.

Rasha spoke sadly about the state of the judicial scene in Lebanon, but she insists that justice will come. She says, “Over the past months, despite the judicial strikes, Judge Charbel Abu Samra, who was assigned the file, used to come to his office and we would see him on a monthly basis.” She added to Asharq Al-Awsat that the judge was “courageous” and “did not slack off on the case,” but the judiciary in Lebanon “is governed by dozens of red lines.”

She reviewed dozens of political assassinations in Lebanon during the past decades, and said that the perpetrators remained outside bars, while impunity is increasing, in light of the general amnesty issued by the Lebanese political forces to one another.

Luqman Selim’s mother, Mrs. Salma Mershaq, spoke to Asharq Al-Awsat, who said that “the pain of losing a child is not healed by days and years, and it differs from the pain of losing a mother and father,” pointing out that grief has turned into a companion of her days, and he will accompany her to death.

She regretted that the killers of her son had not been revealed, and the situation reached by the Lebanese judiciary, “where the final word is no longer for the law, but for the murderer who portrays himself as a hero,” wondering: “What kind of barbarism is this?!”.

Salma remembers what her late husband, Mohsen Selim, told her when he won a lawsuit against the Lebanese government at the time of independence in the 1940s, saying that “what was at the time of independence in the judiciary no longer exists today.”
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