• Karim Hawwa

Initially, Hawa received a phone call from Cybercrime Bureau asking him to show ‎up at their office because the phone he bought recently was allegedly a stolen phone. ‎When Karim went to the office, he got arrested and realised that “the stolen phone” ‎wasn’t the reason behind the arrest, but the article he shared on his Facebook account. ‎The article reports a interview with minister Ziad Aswad accusing Interior Ministry of ‎indirectly dealing with an Israeli-linked company that designs border security tools. ‎Later on, the Cybercrime Bureau contacted Hawa’s mom and asked her to hand over her ‎son’s laptop. ‎ The young activist was denied the right to contact his parents, he was also ‎forbidden from the right to contact a lawyer. During the interrogation, Hawa wasn’t ‎subject to violation, but investigator’s questions where harsh and weird, “are you an ‎agent ?”, “is there a network behind you?”, they also asked him about his relationship ‎with some people. After 4 days of arrest, 2 spent at cybercrime bureau and 2 in Baabda ‎police station, it was clear that the arrest was held for 2 main reasons, the article shared ‎and cybercrime bureau’s belief that Hawa created a fake twitter account for minister of ‎interior Nuhad Al Mashnouk. But after the examination of Hawa’s laptop the ‎investigators could not prove that he ran the Twitter account. ‎