From Naharnet:
A man who staged a sick prank by filming himself threatening to behead three Syrian refugee children has confessed that he was amused by their weeping and their mother actually loved the video, a police statement said on Saturday.
Meanwhile, a security official told Agence France-Presse that the video proved to be a "sick joke," and that the children had been left in the man's care by their mother, his neighbor, while she went to buy groceries.
“He started filming because he liked the scene of the crying children, and that happened in the presence of Lebanese 14-year-old minor M. T.,” the ISF said in its communique.
In a surprising twist, the kids' mother arrived during the last moments of filming and she actually “loved the scene” and asked that the video be sent to her phone.
The knife man, M. F., was referred to the relevant judicial authorities while the minor M. T. was released after his father signed a pledge.
The mom was also freed after she pledged to take good care of her children, the ISF said.
The man had been arrested Friday by ISF Intelligence Bureau agents in the southern town of Ebba in the Nabatiyeh province.
The video, which was posted on YouTube Friday and shared widely, shows the three terrified children crying as a man standing behind a camera waves a knife and asks: "Whom do we behead first?"
“Put your hand here or else I will sever your head,” he tells one of the terrified boys, who cry their lungs out throughout the video.
“You, come here … Do you belong to Daesh?” the man says, using an acronym for the full Arabic name of the extremist Islamic State group, which has recently beheaded two Lebanese soldiers.
Adding to the pathos of the incident, the crying children respond by pointing at each other.