The Judicial Council issued a death sentence for Ahmad Ali Mansour on Friday after he was convicted of deliberately shooting eight people dead and injuring four others, at a shoot-out in the private teachersâ fund at UNESCO, on July 31, 2002. The Judicial Council, headed by Judge Tanios Khouri and in the presence of State Prosecutor Adnan Addoum, issued a final judgment, which cannot be appealed, nine months after the murder that was described as âthe UNESCO massacre.â Mansour did not attend the court session, but his lawyer Ibrahim Hariri was present.
Mansour, 45, entered the office where he had been working for the previous 25 years on July 31, pulled out two machine guns and sprayed his colleagues with bullets. The family of the victims expressed their relief over the verdict, as the president of the Union of Private School Teachers and the father of victim Rachel Rahmeh, George Saade, told reporters that âeven if the verdict cannot give us back the ones we lost, it will serve as a lesson for people like Ahmad Mansour and will stop them for committing such acts of cold blooded murder against innocent people.â The council refused to take into consideration Mansourâs allegations that he committed the murders because an employee at the fund, Romeo Qabalan, insulted Islam and Muslims during a quarrel.
| Well, hey! He only killed eight people and injured four others. Perfectly understandable if Romeo insulted Islam and Muslims. What'd he say? "You Muslims think your religion gives you the right to slaughter anybody who doesn't agree with you"? |
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