Nasrallah said shooting at the helicopter was a mistake, and defended the killer saying he was "not a criminal".
Nasrallah was vehement in denying accusations that the shooting was intentional: “The incident has no political background and it is not a message to the Israelis—that is not how we send messages to them...
We are most cautious in our relations with the army. We have lost martyrs who were killed by the Lebanese Army itself, yet we were cautious to avoid instigating any conflict with the army…Let no one use this helicopter incident to instigate conflict between the army and the Resistance. Nobody gave orders to shoot the helicopter.” However, Nasrallah said that he himself was “responsible for all that the Resistance says and does.”
He described the actual incident in some detail: “The helicopter was not brought down, it landed and some of our brothers were surprised and one of them shot it. We coordinated with the army to come take the helicopter. We asked who fired and who ordered him to, and our dignified brother who opened fire came forward himself.”
Nasrallah said “our youth are not street boys, they came to the resistance for sacrifice and we do not hand in anybody by force.” Nasrallah went on to defend the suspected gunman. “I reject all comments that the Hezbollah member is a criminal,” he said.
Nasrallah is so grand, he decided to forgive and forget:
In the final moments of the speech, Nasrallah addressed the issue of suspects currently imprisoned for plotting to kill him. “There is a group accused of planning to assassinate me, I forgive them and I will send a written letter to the military court urging that they be released during Ramadan."
Unfortunately for Nasrallah, it not up to him to decide on what basis to judge a killer, or when to release suspects from jail. His grandiosity would have earned more respect had he left such judgments to the judiciary. And if he were serious about taking responsibility, then he should have handed himself over to the authorities to be tried for breaking the law and giving young men a license to kill at their own discretion.
