Beirut's State Prosecutor for Appeals Tuesday charged eight people accused of storming and ransacking the Lebanon offices of the Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper last week. A judicial source told The Daily Star that Judge Ziad Abou Haidar charged Pierre Hashash, Bilal Alaw, Hussein Nasreddine, Mohammad Herz, Alaa Hussein, Hasan Qleish and Jad Abu Daher for raiding and trashing the daily's Beirut offices and preventing its employees from doing their jobs. Abbas Zahri, who remains at large, was also charged in absentia. Separately, the lawyer representing five of the men, Hasan Bazzi, referred a complaint to Abu Haidar, which accused the daily and its officials of insulting the Lebanese flag, which is a crime in Lebanon. Some of the men are prominent activists who became known after they were arrested in anti-government protests spurred by the country's garbage crisis. The source said the eight men have been referred to Beirut Investigative Judge Ghassan Oweidat. Police detained the men after they stormed the newspaper's office Friday, the same day it published an April Fools' cartoon ridiculing the Lebanese flag. Asharq al-Awsat published a picture of the Lebanese flag with the caption "April Fools... The Lebanese state". The cartoon created uproar on social media and was widely criticized by citizens and politicians. A video depicting the breach was recorded by Hashash and shared on his Facebook page. The video shows the young men storming past the security guard at the door. At the time, they attempted to convince Asharq al-Awsat's staff to demonstrate against the paper's idea of an April Fools' joke.
