ISF senior officer Suzanne Haj acquitted with macho pretexts!

The Military Tribunal headed by Brigadier General Hussein Abdallah yesterday ruled in the case of ISF Anti-Cybercrime Bureau officer Suzanne Haj and hacker Elie Ghabash, on charges of framing actor Ziad Itani as an Israeli spy (https://lkdg.org/node/18082). The court unanimously voted to acquit Haj for the lack of incriminating evidence against her, and convicted her of withholding information sentencing her to 2 month imprisonment and a fine of LL200,000. Meanwhile, the hacker Ghabash was sentenced to three years of hard labor reduced to one year in prison for fabricating the case against Itani, noting that both were released on time served. In its analysis of the verdict, Al Akhbar newspaper said the ruling was not the issue, but the performance of the public prosecutor, represented by top military prosecutor Peter Germanos. The latter, Al Akhbar wrote, who is supposed to act as the state commissioner in prosecution of the defendants, has intervened to defend Haj, but from a discriminatory macho attitude against women. He noted that the ISF officer was in the middle of a scuffle with her leadership, which is uneasy, and twice as disturbing for being a woman! Germanos said Ghabash has come up with the Itani spying case idea, and went on to defend Haj in a exhaustive intervention. He refused to involve her in the offense, saying that she stood idly by, not more! Moreover, he lauded Haj’s professionalism in duty and her proficiency in detecting IT crimes. Recalling, that in a court ruling last February 7, Haj revealed that the Saudi Intelligence asked for her dismissal from the ISF because she liked a controversial tweet mocking Saudi women. She pointed out that she was interrogated to this effect, mentioning a request from the Saudi Intelligence to the ISF Directorate advising that she steps down and be punished. http://lkdg.org/node/18228. (Al Akhbar, Annahar and Al Diyar 31 May 2019)