Aintoury standoff continues, police deploy

byHabib Battah
Jun 4, 2014

Family and friends continue to gather to resist the demolition of Aintoury Market in Hamra. They blocked the street for about an hour with a shopping cart. The army deployed briefly but now the police have replaced them and are lining up across the street–the fear is that they will soon raid the building. Aintoury owners claim they were only offered $90,000 to vacate after running the family business for over 50 years. More to come…

Habib Battah

Habib Battah is an investigative journalist and founder of the news site beirutreport.com. Battah has covered Lebanon and the Middle East for over 20 years and teaches journalism and media studies at the American University of Beirut. He is a contributor to Monocle, The Guardian, BBC World, Al Jazeera and others, a former fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University and two-time recipient of the Samir Kassir Press Freedom Award. Battah's investigative work was recently recognized for outstanding local reporting by the Columbia University Oakes Award for Environmental Reporting. Battah earned a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. in Near East Studies and Journalism from New York University.