Ibrahim Musa, the founder of the Russian-language Telegram channel “Voice of the Arabs,” was the target of an attempted assassination in Belarus, according to the channel.
Several posts describing the incident were published on the channel on July 27. They claim that the attack was carried out by two Shiite brothers born to a Belarusian-Lebanese family.
“An unsuccessful assassination attempt was made last night in Belarus against our brother Ibrahim Musa while he was attending the birthday celebration of his Palestinian friend. The worst was avoided thanks to the birthday girl’s sister, surveillance cameras in the house, and Ibrahim’s own vigilance,” an eyewitness claimed.
According to the eyewitness, the attack was planned by two “Shiite brothers of Lebanese origin, aged 25 and 27, who studied at a medical university in Belarus.” The post claims they had monitored Musa’s activities for four years and planned to kill him because of his “hatred toward the eliminated head of the Iranian regime, Ali Khamenei.”
According to the eyewitness, the brothers first attempted to poison Musa through a hookah, but he took only one puff before sensing that something was wrong. One of the brothers then allegedly opened fire on him.
“These two bastards coated the hookah intended for Ibrahim with poison. Ibrahim took only a slight puff but sensed something was wrong and stopped smoking it. The sister of the person who invited Ibrahim to her birthday took it away after noticing that something was dripping from it. When Ibrahim and I stepped outside for some fresh air, the second bastard fired at our brother Ibrahim from close range. I chased him, caught him, and knocked him unconscious. I then returned to the house and told everyone what had happened. The birthday girl’s family reviewed the surveillance footage and saw what the Lebanese man who had been in the house had been doing. He tried to flee but was stopped and restrained. The police were then called, and both were arrested. They now face prison terms in Belarus for attempted murder. They also had their own radical Shiite chat group with 10 members,” the eyewitness wrote.
According to the channel, the detained brothers’ mother is Belarusian and their father is Lebanese. They grew up in Belarus and had visited Lebanon only twice during childhood.
“They barely speak Arabic. They led secluded lives, had no personal lives, were ‘gray mice,’ took no active part in the local Lebanese diaspora, and attracted no attention. Their father played almost no role in their lives. They got their political information from Russian-language Telegram channels,” the channel says.
Ibrahim Musa was born in Kirkuk in northern Iraq in 2002. In recent years, he has lived in CIS countries. Musa’s father is a diplomat who worked at the Iraqi embassy in Russia in 2002–2003, during the final years of Saddam Hussein’s rule. Musa spent his childhood in various CIS countries and earned a degree in international relations in Moscow.
Musa founded the Russian-language Telegram channel “Voice of the Arabs,” which he says was stolen by fraudsters. His new channel, @ibragim_mussa, publishes posts about the Arab world from the perspective of Arab nationalism and pan-Arabism. He is critical of the policies of the Iranian regime.
Ibrahim Musa describes himself as a military and political commentator and appears as an expert and analyst in Algerian media.
It should be noted that Belarus’ Interior Ministry has not reported any shooting incidents in recent days.
