Head of the "Free Patriotic Movement", MP Gebran Bassil, pointed out after submitting an appeal before the Constitutional Council against the general amnesty law, headed by a delegation from the "Strong Lebanon" bloc, that "we have submitted an appeal against the general amnesty law issued by the Parliament, because we have three concerns: the first is justice, the second is the victims upon whom the crime was committed, whether they are members of the military institution or other victims, and they are in the thousands, as perpetrators of murder, rape, and other crimes will be pardoned under this law, and the third is the oppressed Islamists for whose sake the law was primarily enacted as a special existing case." He clarified: "We are appealing this law because we are looking for the best for all these people whom I named, and our objective is to correct the law so that it genuinely targets the limited number of oppressed Islamists who have not been tried for long years, knowing that this problem was not supposed to be solved by the Parliament, but rather by the administration or the concerned judiciary." He stressed that "defending the army is a duty and not a stance against any sect, and the greatest crime is sectarian speech, as the martyrs of the military institution belong to various sects, and the majority of them are Sunnis." He said: "We want to reassure the soldier that when we send him on a mission, the one who kills him will not be pardoned, and the matter is not related to the army alone nor to a specific sect, but to the whole of Lebanon." Bassil addressed the critics of submitting the appeal, saying: "To those who criticize us and ask why we are submitting the appeal today, we tell them: You were in a position of responsibility, whether as prime ministers, ministers of justice, or in judicial positions. These people were supposed today, instead of criticizing us, to address this problem." He pointed out that "in December 2025, we submitted as a parliamentary bloc a text to solve this very problem, with a draft law that affects every person imprisoned for two years without trial, and thus we were doing justice to them and to every oppressed person due to the judiciary's failure to try him." He added: "The administrative or judicial failure does not allow the legislative authority, meaning the Parliament, to bypass constitutional rules and issue the law as it issued it today. The basic idea is that a general amnesty is stipulated in the Constitution, meaning the Parliament has the right to issue a general amnesty, provided that it relates to a specific incident or a specific case intended to solve a problem in the country, or a social or sectarian disturbance, without the law being tailored to individuals, but rather to address a problem or an incident." Bassil pointed out that "addressing the problem is what we supported in the bloc and discussed all along for its sake, but what happened is something else, as this situation was used so that every faction in the country could free the persons concerned with it and itself from accountability." He said: "We moved from solving a problem for the Sunni sect related to the oppressed Islamists, to solving a problem for the Shia sect related to drug smugglers and traffickers, to solving a problem they named for the Christian sect related to those present in Israel, reaching the solution of a problem for the system that wants to free itself from prosecution in corruption crimes and everything it committed against public funds or against depositors, and thus the text transformed." Bassil emphasized: "Today, in the name of the Lebanese who reject this state of chaos, we are appealing before the Constitutional Council and asking it to annul this law, so that we may go to the law that includes the oppressed Islamists, or at a minimum to make the constructive correction to the existing legal situation." Bassil paused at the reasons for the appeal, pointing out that among them is "the failure to vote by roll call, which is a clear constitutional article." He added: "It is not permissible for the Parliament, when confusion occurs, for approval to take place by a show of hands, so we do not know who is with and who is against, and MPs are no longer subject to popular accountability so that people know whether the MPs close to them voted for the law or against it." He explained that "there is also a violation of the popular will represented by the Parliament, through the issuance of a law contrary to what took place inside the parliamentary council, and this becomes tantamount to forgery. There are minutes that we requested to obtain and we did not receive an answer, in addition to leaks of several texts, and I do not know if the law was changed while being transported from one headquarters to another. We saw several versions, and in the end we ask ourselves: How was the text formulated?" He stressed that "this matter touches upon the legislative will of the Parliament and sabotages it." Bassil stressed that "this law is inapplicable. Yesterday, there was an outcry by Acting Public Prosecutor Judge Ahmad Rami Al-Hajj that the law needs a fortune-teller to decipher it, and this alone is sufficient. And I do not know if they will accuse the Acting Public Prosecutor of being against the Sunni sect because he raised his voice in this regard, but he certainly realized the disasters that can result from this law, because it is unreadable and cannot be interpreted in a single way." He added: "The law is also not interpreted by judicial circulars. Administrative and judicial circulars have another character and not the character of interpreting the law, and if a circular of this type is issued, it becomes liable to appeal before the State Consultative Council." He affirmed that "among the additional reasons for the appeal is the failure to abide by the explanatory reasons. And one of the explanatory reasons is prison overcrowding. The question here is: How can the explanatory reasons be overcrowding, when the law pardons people who have not been judged and have not been imprisoned, but against whom only in absentia arrest warrants have been issued? These people were not even wronged so that we can say they remained in prisons without a trial. These are people who fled and have now become equal to people who surrendered themselves, and the law pardons both." Bassil considered that "there is another reason for the appeal related to the principle of separation of powers, and here is the major disaster, because the legislative authority represented by the Parliament does not have the right to legislate in violation of constitutional rules to justify either that it did not perform its duties and did not enact the necessary legislation, or to justify the failure of another authority separate from it, meaning the judicial or executive authority." He added: "This law allows any state employee who committed a violation to say: I have become pardoned, and it even allows a penalized employee to say that he has become pardoned. Meaning that today, in the whole country, we are legislating for exemption, from the one who stole in public administration to the perpetrator judge, up to a person who obtained a license, for example, or upon whom an administrative penalty was imposed, so he can say that he has become pardoned." Bassil considered that "general amnesty is an exception, because the general rule is accountability, but with this law we have become before a general rule of non-accountability, and the exception is accountability and punishment, because the law that was issued included all crimes with the exception of the crimes it enumerated and which it does not include." He pointed out "the loose expressions and the misinterpretation that can happen," stressing that "this law touches upon the general order of the state." Bassil concluded by saying: "Review all the heinous crimes and all their perpetrators will get out and have been rewarded and will repeat their crimes, and I ask the MPs who signed the amnesty what these criminals have to do with the detained Islamists?! Moreover, the law looked at the criminals, so where are the victims, guarantees, and compensations? The families of the victims have begun to fear being exposed to them because of this law."