Knights of Ali

The ‘Knights of Ali’ (Arabic: Fityan Ali) was an obscure Shia faction that used to operate in West Beirut and a member of the Lebanese National Movement (LNM) in the mid-1970s. In May 1975 the group was responsible for the massacre and mutilation of 50 Christians whose severed genitalia were placed in their mouths and whose bodies were left in a cemetery at the mainly Muslim Beirut district of Bashoura. Regarded as a mere criminal street gang, the ‘Knights of Ali’ disappeared around the late 1970s or early 1980 and nothing has been heard of them since.