Lebanon’s FPM Condemns US Sanctions on Party Leader Bassil

By Staff, Agencies

Lebanon’s Christian Free Patriotic Movement Saturday rejected US sanctions imposed against its head MP Gebran Bassil, calling the move “blatant slander.”

The party in a statement announced “its total rejection of US sanctions against the leader of the Free Patriotic Movement ... and considers them a blatant slander.”

The FPM accused the US of “using the prestige, influence and power of its country to break a free Lebanese will,” and called on the administration to revise its “unjust decision,” urging it to “show any evidence, documents or information that justifies its decision.”

Bassil is the latest high-ranking Lebanese official to be targeted by US sanctions, after former ministers Youssef Fenianos and Ali Hasan Khalil were blacklisted in September.

The former Foreign Minister and leader of the largest parliamentary bloc was the first Lebanese official to be sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act.