BEIRUT (Reuters) – The U.S. ambassador to Lebanon paid a rare visit to a quarter of Beirut that is a Hezbollah stronghold to attend the memorial service for activist Lokman Slim on Thursday.
He was shot dead and found in his car last Thursday in south Lebanon – the first killing of a high-profile activist in years.
“This was a barbaric act, unforgivable and unacceptable,” Dorothy Shea said in a speech at the service which was held at the family home in Beirut’s Dahiya quarter.
Slim ran a research centre, made documentaries with his wife and led efforts to build an archive on Lebanon’s 1975-1990 sectarian civil war.
(Reporting by Maha El Dahan and Laila Bassam; Editing by Alison Williams)