Lebanon sentences 2 to death for 1982 assassination

BEIRUT, LEBANON - OCTOBER 20: Lebanese soldiers stand at attention during a demonstration by Members and supporters of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) in front of the Court of Justice in the capital Beirut on October 20, 2017. The Lebanese judiciary on Friday handed down death sentences against two defendants accused -- in absentia -- of assassinating Lebanese President-elect Bachir Gemayel in 1982. Ten days after being elected president by Lebanon’s parliament, Gemayel was killed by a car-bomb explosion in Beirut. On Friday, Lebanon’s Council of Justice sentenced the only two defendants in the case -- Habib Shartouni and Nabil al-Alam, both of whom remain at large -- to death. Gemayel emerged in the late 1970s, during Lebanon’s bloody civil war, as a leader of the right-wing Christian Phalangist militia. In 1980, he succeeded his father to the leadership of the Lebanese Phalanges Party, which played a role in Beirut’s infamous 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre. (Footage by Jihad Muhammad Behlok/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)