Murderer of Irish peacekeepers released early from prison in Lebanon, lawyer confirms

Lebanese national Mahmoud Bazzi who was convicted of murdering two Irish peacekeepers in 1980 has been released early from prison, his lawyer has confirmed.

Lawyer Saliba Haj told The Irish Times that the 79-year-old man, who has served 8½ years of a 15-year sentence, was released from Roumieh prison, the largest prison in Lebanon.

A separate legal source said that Bazzi has been released after the court of appeal of Beirut granted him early release on health and age grounds.

Bazzi was given a 15-year sentence by a military court in Beirut in 2020 but had been detained in prison in Lebanon since 2015. His release means he served 8½ years in prison or more than half his sentence.

Cannes 2024: Bird review – Barry Keoghan excels as a likeable dad geezer

---

First look at new over 23s nightclub in Dublin city centre: ‘It’ll be big. It’ll be loud. It’ll be spectacular’

---

Eric Clapton in Dublin review: guitar hero rocks the grey-haired faithful with a night of classics

---

Dublin-Monaghan bombings: ‘When I looked out into the street, I knew all normality was gone. It was like hell on Earth’

---

Irish soldiers, Privates Derek Smallhorne and Thomas Barrett, were murdered on April 18th, 1980, while serving with a United Nations mission in the country.

Another soldier, Private John O’Mahony suffered serious injuries.

Bazzi was released on July 31st but the Smallhorne and Barrett families were only told of his release this week. The Department of Defence has been seeking to confirm reports of the Lebanese man’s release.

The department said on Monday it had no update on his release.

To ease chronic overcrowding in prisons the Lebanese government introduced a law in 2012 that means that a year-long sentence in a Lebanese prison only requires a prisoner to serve nine months.

Mr Haj told The Irish Times that Bazzi’s 15-year sentence only required him to spend 11 years and three months in jail.

On this basis, Bazzi’s early release means that his sentence was, in practical terms, reduced by the court of appeal of Beirut by two years and nine months.

The court of appeal of Beirut – which is a civil court separate from the military court – has jurisdiction to review the sentences of prisoners and reduce them on the basis of age, health and good behaviour in prison.

Bazzi murdered the two Irish men to avenge his brother who had been killed in a firefight with Irish and Fijian forces that became known as the Battle of At Tiri.

A member of the Israeli-sponsored South Lebanon Army militia, Bazzi later appeared on television and said he murdered the men to avenge his brother, but later changed his story and said he was ordered to kill the men.

Bazzi lived for many years in Michigan in the US selling ice-cream. He was arrested and deported to Lebanon in 2015 over immigration offences and was put on trial for the murders of the two Irish men before a military tribunal.

A report from the Beirut Bar Association published earlier this year found that Roumieh prison was holding 4,000 prisoners, despite only having capacity for 1,200.

A report released by the NGO Human Rights Watch this month said that conditions in detention centres across Lebanon have deteriorated dangerously since the start of the economic crisis in 2019 and that prisons were not being supplied with sufficient food.