ISF arrests 11 for vandalism during Beirut protests

The ISF announced in a statement Sunday that they had arrested 11 individuals on suspicion of rioting and vandalism during the protests in Beirut last weekend sparked by the rapid depreciation of the Lebanese pound.

In a post made on the ISF’s Twitter feed, they released screengrabs that appear to have been taken from camera crews covering events that evening which show rioters attacking storefronts in Downtown Beirut with a number of suspects circled out.

A judicial source had previously told The Daily Star last week that the security services were requesting media organizations to provide them with footage of the protests in order to identify the perpetrators.

The ISF did not immediately respond for comment when approached by The Daily Star regarding whether any media organizations had been complicit in providing intelligence, nor if the security services were still looking for additional suspects.

With the Lebanese pound continuing to collapse and endemic poverty on the rise, protests in Lebanon have turned increasingly violent in recent weeks as people take to the streets in the biggest show of force since the coronavirus lockdown began.