The International Committee of the Red Cross has asked Israeli authorities to return to Lebanon the body of a Lebanese pilot whose plane was shot down over Israel last week, an ICRC envoy said Monday.
Swiss delegate, Henri Fournier, told the Daily Star newspaper that the Red Cross had raised the issue with Israeli authorities and was still waiting for an answer.
Fournier was also in contact with the family of Stephan Nicolian, the student pilot who flew a Cessna single-engine aircraft Thursday without authorization from Beirut International Airport and entered Israeli airspace where he was shot down.
On Monday, Fournier met with Nicolian's mother, Alice, at the ICRC offices in Beirut, said the paper.
"She asked the ICRC to help her repatriate the remains of her son," Fournier said.
He added that he had contacted the Israeli authorities on Friday after receiving a request from a close friend of the Nicolian family.
"There's been no answer yet (from the Israelis)," Fournier said.
Lebanese judicial officials said Alice Nicolian, who lives in the United States, returned to Lebanon on the weekend and wanted the body of her 43-year-old son buried next to his father, who died in the civil war, in Beirut's Ras Al Nabaa cemetery – Albawaba.com
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