It's like something from a Hammer horror film, this case of villagers' vengeance in Lebanon. An Egyptian immigrant confessed to several murders, then the locals took justice into their own hands.
The mob stabbed him to death and then hanged him with a butcher's hook from a pole in the village square.
Mohammed Muslem... was leading police officers through the events of the day when dozens of villagers dragged him away from police custody and began beating him with sticks and knives.Some witnesses said police rescued him and took him to a nearby hospital, only for the crowd to break in to the intensive care unit, drag him out and continue to beat him.
After killing Mohammed Muslem, the mob is reported to have stripped him down to his underpants, driven his body through the streets on a car bonnet, and then hung him from a pole in the centre of the village with onlookers crying "Allahu Akbar" or God is Great.
There are all sorts of classically Gothic features here, starting with the mass action of enraged villagers. There's the British literary fear of Mediterranean religious violence (cf Radcliffe). Add in fear of the other.
(photo from the Beeb account, which captions like so: "Residents watched as the body was hung in the village square"; thanks to grim-eyed Ed Webb)
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