BEIRUT: Maronite Patriarch Beshara Rai met with Etienne Sakr, head of the radical Guardians of the Cedars group, during his visit to Cyprus, An-Nahar reported Tuesday.

According to the daily, the two met during a gathering held by the Maronite MP in the Cypriot Parliament Antonios Hajj at his residence, to which over 60 people were invited in honor of Rai.

The patriarch, who was on an official visit to Nicosia, had a “friendly” meeting with Sakr, who is wanted by the military judiciary for alleged contacts with Israel. He has been sentenced in absentia to death and life imprisonment.

Sakr -- also known as "Abu Arz" -- and the Guardians of the Cedars have denied the allegations.

The head of the anti-Palestinian group left Lebanon in 2000 following the withdrawal of the Israeli army from south Lebanon, as did a number of Lebanese who had collaborated with Israel and feared reprisals.

Active members of the Guardians of the Cedars in Lebanon confirmed the meeting between Sakr and Rai to the newspaper, saying that Sakr was paying the price for his positions against the Syrian presence in Lebanon and the [machinations of] the dominant elites in political life.

During his visit, Rai met with a number of officials including Cypriot President Demetris Christofias.

In 2005, three top-level officers of the Guardians of the Cedars party, Habib Younes, Naji Audeh, and Joseph Tawk, were sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor for threatening to commit crimes of violence against civilians, undermining the state, inciting sectarian strife and instigating hostility by calling for the killing of Palestinians living in Lebanese territories.

The charges stemmed from a press conference they held, during which they screened their party's propaganda videos from the Civil War.

In his statement of accusation, Beirut's Chief Investigating Magistrate Abdel-Rahim Hammoud was quoted as saying: "the three officials attempted to restart their organization with calls for "a return to the 1926 Constitution, withdrawing Lebanon from the Arab League, distinguishing Lebanon from its Arab surroundings with the argument that Arabism was created and confined to the Arab peninsula, and brought only destruction to Lebanon."

Hammoud also said that the most worrying moment of the group's conference was when they issued slogans calling for "the expulsion of Palestinians from Lebanon and the confiscation of their properties."

The three men were briefly imprisoned before having their convictions overturned.