The statement from President Michel Suleiman come a day after a crowd of angry residents in the Chouf mountain town of Ketermaya attacked Mohammed Msallem, a 38-year-old butcher living in the village who was arrested earlier this week on suspicion of killing an elderly couple and their two young granddaughters.
Msallem was leading police investigators through a reenactment of the killings Thursday when villagers set upon him with sticks and knives. After killing him, they stripped his body down to the underpants, drove it on a car hood, then hanged it from a pole.
Suleiman said in remarks released by his office that despite the “ugliness of the crime committed by the accused,” the mob killing “harms Lebanon's image.” He ordered the country's justice and interior ministers to take measures against villagers who took part in the attack, but did not specify what those steps should be.
Also Friday, Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported that a knife and T-shirt soaked with blood were found in Msallem's apartment showed that the blood was for two of the four the victims. It said the blood on the T-shirt was that of the grandmother and the blood on the knife was to one of the girls.
It added that part of the sweat and blood on the knife's handle were of the suspect.
Security officials said Msallem had confessed to killing the four family members, but the motive was not immediately clear. One official said Ketermaya residents also believed Msallem had raped a 15-year-old local girl a month earlier, but that report could not be independently confirmed.
Crime has been on the rise in Lebanon but such vigilante mob killings have been rare since the end of the 1975-90 civil war, during which political violence was common.
Earlier in the day, Justice Minister Ibrahim Najjar told the leading Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. that authorities have the names of at least 10 people who took part in the mob killing, and prosecutors should take action against them.
“The crime is clear for the naked eye and judicial authorities should do their job,” Najjar said. “We will never accept mass punishment by the people.” “It is impossible for human conscience to accept such behavior,” he said.
