Saad al-Masri was a Lebanese Sunni militia commander from the Bab al-Tabbaneh neighborhood of Tripoli. al-Masri succeeded his brother Khodor al-Masri as the leader of a major Sunni militia and protection racket based out of Bab al-Tabbaneh's vegetable market, and he fought in the Syrian Civil War before being arrested in April 2014 and sentenced to 2.5 years in prison.
Biography[]
Masri in Tripoli
Saad al-Masri was born in the Minyeh neighborhood of Tripoli, Lebanon to a Sunni Muslim father and an Alawite Shia mother. Saad dropped out of school in the fifth grade to work alongside his father at the Bab al-Tabbaneh vegetable market, and he inherited his status as a fighter and businessman from his brother Khodor, who took part in clashes with the Shi'ites of Jabal Mohsen in 2008 and was killed by the Lebanese Army in 2012. Saad inherited his brother's control of Bab al-Tabbaneh and its vegetable market, and he came to have a net worth of $1 million (collected from vegetable merchants as protection money) and live in a villa in Bab al-Tabbaneh and an upscale apartment in the Damm and Farz district of Tripoli. During the Syrian Civil War, he spent several months in Turkey, the main logistics base for the Free Syrian Army, and his return to Bab al-Tabbaneh in February 2014 was celebrated with gunshots from his militia soldiers and subordinates such as Ziad Alouki. In April 2014, he was arrested by the military during a crackdown on the warlords of Tripoli, and he was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail; he was released in 2016.