Lebanon’s acting Director-General of General Security, Elias al-Baysari, said that a decision to ban Kuwaiti journalist Fajr Al-Saeed from entering Beirut was not directed against the Middle Eastern nation.
Al-Baysari said that Lebanon is keen to preserve the “best relations” with its Arab neighbours and that the decision to prevent Al-Saeed from entering was made because she had previously visited Israel, a country that Beirut considers to be an enemy, reports Xinhua news agency.
“Any decision not to grant an entry visa is a sovereign decision, and Lebanon is not obliged to justify it, except within the diplomatic framework,” al-Baysari said.
Al-Saeed, however, claimed on Twitter that the decision of the Lebanese General Security was due to her political views, which are opposed to Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group and in support of normalising ties with Israel.
On the evening of June 7, Al-Saeed was halted at Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport.
Lebanon’s General Security declined a plea from Kuwaiti Embassy representatives to permit her to stay overnight before departing on the earliest flight to Kuwait.
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