Lebanon's Justice Minister Ibraim Najjar said Sunday 10 suspects were identified for killing and lynching an Egyptian man suspected of killing four from one family in a Lebanese village as Egypt's Foreign Ministry instructed a Lebanese lawyer to follow up the case. "The crime of lynching the Egyptian man is videotaped, and ten suspects were identified. The local police are instructed to arrest them to stand urgent trial," Najjar said on Sunday. He added that all those involved in the brutal crime would come to justice. Angry villagers in the southeastern Lebanese mountain village of Ketermaya killed Egyptian Mohamed Msallem, a murder suspect, and strung his body up with a butcher's hook in a revenge attack that has shocked the country. Msallem was arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of killing an elderly couple and their two young granddaughters. When police brought him to the scene of the crime on Thursday, an angry mob overwhelmed the policemen and beat Msallem with sticks and stones and stabbed him. To cheers and applause, they stripped him to his underwear and socks, paraded him through the street and hoisted him up on an electricity pole with a butcher's hook. Egyptian Ambassador in Beirut Ahmed el-Bedewi had formed a team from the consular department at the embassy to keep close eye on the investigations and he hired a Lebanese lawyer to follow them up. "We are sure the Lebanese authorities will do their best to arrest the killers and put them on trial," el-Bedewi said Sunday. He added that extra security measures were taken to gurantee the safety of the murdered Egyptian's the mother, who is married to a Lebanese man. Around 20 Egyptian MPs at the Shura Council (the Upper House of Egypt's Parliament) called for an urgent detention and trial of the killers of Msallem. "This brutal killing needs a strict standing," they said. Lebanon's Head of Police General Ashraf Rifi has taken "disciplinary measures" against a number of officers and policemen "for committing major mistakes in underestimating the situation on the ground and failing to provide enough and necessary protection for the suspect in this crime." Lebanon's Interior Minister, Ziad Baroud, along with Lebanon's President Michel Suleiman has condemned the killing of Msallem and said such acts defame the country's image in front the world.
