GCC Countries Plan To Deport Thousands Of Lebanese Shiites- Report

Arab states in the Gulf region intend to deport thousands of Lebanese Shiites over their alleged links to Hizbullah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard force, a Kuwaiti newspaper reported on Thursday. Al-Seyassah, quoting “Arab diplomatic sources,” said the move was being considered because of intelligence reports that Lebanese Shiites activists had been involved in protests in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The decision will be implemented no later that mid-April.

Based on the assessments by the United States, France and Bahrain, alleged Hizbullah and Revolutionary Guard operatives were the driving force behind the Shiite protests in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, it said.

According to the newspaper, Bahrain’s decision to suspend flights to Iran, Iraq and Lebanon had “paved the way for the deportation of thousands of Lebanese Shiites from the Gulf.”

“No Lebanese Shiite linked to or suspected of being associated with Hizbullah and the Revolutionary Guards will remain in the Gulf,” the diplomatic sources said, citing high-ranking Bahraini officials.

Bahrain is to deport 90 Lebanese Shiites, most of them detained during the recent protests in the kingdom, and is examining the status of 4,000 Lebanese families living in the kingdom, the sources said.

The newspaper said that there was news that the Bahraini authorities had arrested five members of Fneish family from Lebanon. They were working in a restaurant in Manama and are suspected of collaborating with a “third party.”

The UAE deported in 2009, dozens of Lebanese all of them from the Shiite community.