The young men were threatened with death by having to pay a ransom of $150,000, or $50,000 per person, while many activists questioned, through their comments, whether this video was realistic and was filmed in Lebanon amid complete disapproval of what appeared in it.
What are the details of the story?
After publications spread through horrific videos and showed the method of torture frighteningly, Sky News Arabia tried to verify the authenticity of these publications, to find out after research that the scenes were actually filmed in Lebanon.
- The videos were filmed in the northern Bekaa region, where kidnappings for money are on the rise.
- The three young men who are subjected to torture in the publications are from the city of Tripoli in the north of the country, specifically from the residents of Najma Square in the center of the city. They are Shadi and Khaled al-Zayyat (cousins of 19 years old) and another young man named Zakaria al-Ali (30 years old) who lives in another area and he always frequented Najma Square In the city he is on friendship with most of the young men of the neighborhood there.
- The story is similar to the stories of mafias that began to increase in Lebanon after the deterioration of the economic situation.
One of them is accused of the Tripoli crime
- According to private information to Sky News Arabia, “the young man named Zakaria among the kidnapped youths is accused of the crime that shook the city of Tripoli 3 weeks ago and killed 4 people in a cell phone shop in the Al-Tal area in the city center, according to the people of the city and the security services are looking for him.”
- The sources added: “Zakaria Al-Ali is considered a main suspect in the Al-Tal crime,” and continued, “The security services are looking for him, and it is reported that he had a quarrel with the owner of a store selling cell phones, who was killed and his brother at the time,” and that “Zakaria resorted to the fourth person who was killed at the time in the same store called Khaled Abdel Majid, to solve the problems, but the crime occurred without knowing the rest of the details of the story, and Khaled and 3 others were killed, including the store owner and his brother.
- Private sources indicate to our website that the families of the kidnapped young men, Shadi and Khaled, from the Zayat family, residents of Najma Square in Tripoli, received a phone call from their young son, Walid (14 years), from a person who spoke the Syrian dialect, saying that he spoke from the northern Bekaa and asking for a sum of $150,000 in exchange for not being killed. The three kidnapped youths, including the main suspect in the crime of the cell phone store, Zakaria Al-Ali, according to the accounts of the city’s residents.
- A member of the family of the young men, Shadi and Khaled Al-Zayat, revealed to Sky News Arabia that “their children (the Al-Zayat family) mentioned have nothing to do with the crime, and that they are today in a state of kidnapping and torture in the northern Bekaa as a result of their previous knowledge of Zakaria, who is accused of the crime, and that they fled from their place of residence for fear of information spread. That everyone related to Zakaria is looking for him by the Lebanese security services.”
- He added: “He knew that Zakaria al-Ali was a former prisoner in the prison of the Bekaa city of Zahle, and from there he met eccentric people in prison.”
- The spokesperson told our website: “Maybe he is in a relationship even with his kidnappers, I don’t know, but the scenes that we received show that he was violently beaten, and this raises the question about whether there is a relationship or not.”
Security agencies news
- The man adds: “We, the Al-Zayyat family, told the relevant security services just because we received a call and we asked them to help us find out the fate of our children, and we have no ability to pay such an amount.”
- “We are ready to present Shadi and Khaled to the state and its agencies if they have any connection to the Al-Tal crime, and we have issued a family statement about that.”
- He continues: “There are many sources of contact with us as a family, down to the number of our son-in-law and the brother of the young men, who is a boy of determination,” noting that “the numbers they receive are unknown and often not Lebanese numbers.”
- “They sent us a set of torture photos and videos, very horrific.”
- The man concludes his conversation with Sky News Arabia by saying: “We are the sons of Tripoli, we are not ISIS and we have nothing to do with that. Shadi was in a café playing cards at the moment of the hill crime, while Khaled was at home.”
- “We refuse to be a stick-breaker or for our children to be protection for criminals accused of murder. We are under the roof of the law, and our children are also in the event that any charges are proven against them, and the important thing is to save them now.”
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