BEIRUT: Lebanon’s embassy in Cairo has asked Egypt for protection after receiving an anonymous pledge to avenge the lynching of an Egyptian by villagers near Beirut last week, a Lebanese official said Monday.
"The Lebanese ambassador, Khaled Ziade, has asked Egyptian authorities to provide the embassy with protection," after receiving the threatening phone call on Sunday, a government source told AFP.
"He immediately hung up after making the threat," the source added.
The caller vowed to avenge the death of Mohamed Muslem, an Egyptian suspected of murdering an elderly couple and their two young granddaughters in Ketermaya, 25 kilometers southeast of Beirut, who was lynched by an angry mob on Thursday.
Muslem, 38, was being driven by a police escort to re-enact his crime when several hundred residents of Ketermaya dragged him out of the police car and beat and stabbed him to death before hanging his body on a pole with a butcher’s hook.
Gruesome images of the lynching were broadcast by local television stations, prompting a wave of condemnation, including from Lebanon’s President Michel Sleiman and Interior Minister Ziad Baroud who have called for an inquiry.
