Lebanon’s Hezbollah will choose a successor to its slain secretary-general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah “at the earliest opportunity” and will continue the fight against Israel, the Iran-backed group’s deputy chief Naim Qassem said on Monday.
He spoke in a televised speech, the first appearance for a Hezbollah official since Nasrallah was killed on Friday in an Israeli air attack on the southern suburbs of Lebanon’s capital.
“We will choose a secretary-general for the party at the earliest opportunity…and we will fill the leadership and positions on a permanent basis,” Qassem said, speaking in front of wooden panels from an undisclosed location.
Here are some facts about Qassem.
— Qassem is a veteran figure in the group, having served as deputy secretary-general since 1991.
— He was appointed deputy secretary-general under Hezbollah’s late secretary-general, Abbas Al Musawi, who was killed by an Israeli helicopter attack in 1992, and remained in the role when Nasrallah became leader.
— His political activism began in the Lebanese Amal Movement, founded in 1974. He left Amal in 1979 in the wake of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, which shaped the political thinking of many young Lebanese Shia activists. He took part in meetings that led to the formation of Hezbollah, which was established by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 1982.
— He has long been one of the leading spokesmen for Hezbollah, conducting many interviews with foreign media. As cross-border hostilities raged with Israel during the Gaza war, he told Al Jazeera in June that Hezbollah’s decision was not to widen the war but that it would fight one if it was imposed on it.
— He has been the general coordinator of Hezbollah’s parliamentary election campaigns since the group first contested them in 1992.
— He was born in 1953 in Beirut’s Basta Tahta district and his family originally hail from Kfar Fila, in Lebanon’s predominantly Shia south. He is married with six children.