Lee came to the Bekaa to stay at the home of a man called Adonis Al Masri, an inquest held in the UK after Lee’s death heard.
Adonis has a brown, gingery beard. But if you looked closely you’d see it was covering scars. As a teenager in the 1980s, he was caught up in one of the bloody feuds that frequently erupt among the Bekaa’s sprawling families, which control the valley. Adonis was shot in the face. He’s had dozens of skin-graft operations to try to repair the damage done to his jaw. A relative says that the traumatic event warped his life – ever since he’s relied on drink and drugs to numb the pain and combat depression. They say he’s a volatile character prone to mood swings.
Adonis and Lee knew each other from the UK. On one occasion, Adonis was introduced by Lee to his father – at a birthday party held at an Italian restaurant in London’s West End. Tom’s first impression was that Adonis “seemed all right”. It was a view shared by others. But during the UK inquest, Lee’s half-brother, Gerald Copeman, was quoted as saying that Adonis claimed to have killed the man who had shot him in his face. Several friends also recall Adonis bragging of ties to Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia organisation whose military wing is designated a terrorist organisation by the UK. Perhaps, most bizarrely of all, he boasted of having helped free the British hostage, Terry Waite, who was held in Lebanon during the civil war in the 1980s. One of Adonis’s relatives described this claim as complete fantasy.
Whatever the truth, Adonis is from one of the most prominent and powerful families in the Bekaa Valley. His great grandfather, Mulhim Qasim Al Masri, was hailed as a courageous freedom fighter against Lebanon’s former Ottoman and French occupiers. Adonis’s grandfather, Nayef Al Masri, was a member of the Lebanese parliament from 1960 to 1972. Remember that name – we’ll be returning to him later.
Adonis, himself, has political ties. He organised gatherings at his home for one of the main Lebanese political parties during the recent election. He posted pictures of himself on social media with top politicians. Anybody seeing those pictures would be left with the impression that Adonis is a man with powerful friends.
Like almost everyone else in the Bekaa, Adonis had access to guns. It’s a way of life up in the valley. During the UK inquest, Lee’s half-brother Andrew Harrison recalled a FaceTime call during which Lee showed him around what appeared to be the Al Masri family armoury. There were sub-machine guns and rocket launchers, according to Andrew. But as Lee walked out on to a balcony, Andrew was to get an even bigger surprise from what he saw earlier on the video call. “On the right-hand side there was a pile – I would estimate to be about five high and six feet wide – of brown-coloured powder that I recognised to be cannabis,” he was quoted as saying at the inquest.
The court would hear that Lee was not in the Bekaa to celebrate Christmas after all. According to his family, he was in fact in Lebanon to do a drug deal. Four months later it would all go tragically wrong.
from Viral Update News http://bit.ly/2WwxlVG
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