Lebanese pop star turned militant appears in court after 12 years on the run

Audio By Carbonatix

BEIRUT (AP) — A Lebanese pop star turned Islamist militant who surrendered this month after 12 years on the run appeared in Beirut court Tuesday for the first time.

Fadel Shaker had been hiding out in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein el-Hilweh since bloody street clashes erupted between Sunni Muslim militants and the Lebanese army in June 2013 in the coastal city of Sidon.

He was tried in absentia and sentenced to 22 years in prison in 2020 for providing support to a “terrorist group.”

As part of the deal that persuaded Shaker to turn himself in, the sentences he received while on the run would be dropped and he would be questioned in preparation to stand trial on new charges of committing crimes against the military. Tuesday’s court appearance was a preliminary questioning session.

During the 2013 shootout between followers of hard-line Sunni cleric Sheikh Ahmad al-Assir and the Lebanese army, which killed at least 18 soldiers, Shaker appeared in a video uploaded to YouTube in which he called his enemies pigs and dogs, and taunted the military, saying “we have two rotting corpses that we snatched from you yesterday,” an apparent reference to slain soldiers.

Shaker became a pop star throughout the Arab world with a smash hit in 2002. Almost 10 years later, he fell under the influence of al-Assir and shocked fans by turning up next to the cleric at rallies and later saying that he was giving up singing to become closer to God.

In recent years, he had returned to periodically releasing music, including several singles this year. In July, Shaker and his son Mohammed released a new song that has garnered over 127 million views on YouTube.