Who is Naim Kassem, the acting leader of Hezbollah?

BEIRUT (AP) — Sheikh Naim Kassem has been the acting head of Hezbollah since its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed as part of an Israeli offensive that has taken out many of the Lebanese militant group’s senior officials.

Kassem made a defiant televised speech Tuesday, claiming that the group's military capabilities are intact and Israelis will only suffer further as fighting continues.

Like Nasrallah, Kassem is one of the founding members of the Shiite political party and armed group, but he is widely seen as lacking the former leader’s charisma and oratory skills.

Still, the white-turbaned cleric with a gray beard has often been the public face of the group. After Nasrallah went underground out of fear of being assassinated by Israel, appearing only in televised speeches, Kassem continued to show up at rallies and ceremonies, and he has sat for interviews with foreign journalists.

Mohanad Hage Ali, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center think tank who researches Hezbollah, said that Kassem is perceived by many as “more extreme” than Nasrallah, at least in his public statements.

In practice, however, his power within the group was limited under Nasrallah. Hashem Safieddine, a cousin of Nasrallah who oversees the group’s political affairs — not Kassem — was generally regarded as the leader's heir apparent. But no announcement has been made, and Safieddine has not appeared publicly or made any public statements since Nasrallah’s death.

Kassem has been sanctioned by the United States, which considers Hezbollah a terrorist group.

He was born in the town of Kfar Fila in southern Lebanon and studied chemistry at the Lebanese University before working for several years as a chemistry teacher.

At the same time, he pursued religious studies and participated in founding the Lebanese Union for Muslim Students, an organization that aimed to promote religious adherence among students.

In the 1970s, Kassem joined the Movement of the Dispossessed, a political organization founded by Imam Moussa Sadr that pushed for greater representation for Lebanon’s historically overlooked and impoverished Shiite community. The group morphed into the Amal movement, one of the main armed groups in Lebanon’s civil war, and now a powerful political party.

He then joined the nascent Hezbollah, formed with support from Iran after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied the country’s southern region.

From 1991, he served as deputy secretary-general of the group, initially under Nasrallah’s predecessor, Abbas Mousawi, who was killed by an Israeli helicopter attack in 1992.

FILE - Hezbollah's deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Kassem, after casting his vote during Lebanon's parliamentary elections in Beirut, Sunday, May 6, 2018. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File)

FILE - Hezbollah's deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Kassem, attends a ceremony in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File)

FILE - Hezbollah's deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Kassem, raises his finger after casting his vote during Lebanon's parliamentary elections in Beirut, Sunday, May 6, 2018. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File)

Hezbollah's deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Kassem, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Beirut's southern suburbs, Tuesday, July 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

Hezbollah's deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Kassem, listens to a speech by then-leader Hassan Nasrallah on a screen in southern Beirut, Wednesday, June 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Nicaragua’s Interior Ministry said Saturday the country would release dozens of prisoners, as the United States ramped up pressure on leftist President Daniel Ortegaa week after it ousted former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

On Friday, the U.S. Embassy in Nicaragua said Venezuela had taken an important step toward peace by releasing what it described as “political prisoners.” But it lamented that in Nicaragua, “more than 60 people remain unjustly detained or disappeared, including pastors, religious workers, the sick, and the elderly.”

On Saturday, the Interior Ministry said in a statement that “dozens of people who were in the National Penitentiary System are returning to their homes and families.”

It wasn’t immediately clear who was freed and under what conditions. Nicaragua’s government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The government has been carrying out an ongoing crackdown since mass social protests in 2018, that were violently repressed.

Nicaragua’s government has imprisoned adversaries, religious leaders, journalists and more, then exiled them, stripping hundreds of their Nicaraguan citizenship and possessions. Since 2018, it has shuttered more than 5,000 organizations, largely religious, and forced thousands to flee the country. Nicaragua’s government often accused critics and opponents of plotting against the government.

In recent years, the government has released hundreds of imprisoned political opponents, critics and activists. It stripped them of Nicaraguan citizenship and sent them to other countries like the U.S. and Guatemala. Observers have called it an effort to wash its hands of its opposition and offset international human rights criticism. Many of those Nicaraguans were forced into a situation of "statelessness."

Saturday on X, the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs again slammed Nicaragua’s government. “Nicaraguans voted for a president in 2006, not for an illegitimate lifelong dynasty,” it said. “Rewriting the Constitution and crushing dissent will not erase the Nicaraguans’ aspirations to live free from tyranny.”

Danny Ramírez-Ayérdiz, executive-secretary of the Nicaraguan human rights organization CADILH, said he had mixed feelings about the releases announced Saturday.

“On the one hand, I’m glad. All political prisoners suffer some form of torture. But on the other hand, I know these people will continue to be harassed, surveilled and monitored by the police, and so will their families.”

Ramírez-Ayérdiz said the liberation of the prisoners is a response to pressure exerted by the United States. “There is surely a great deal of fear within the regime that the U.S. might completely dismantle it,” he said.

FILE - Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega waves after attending the swearing-in ceremony of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro for a third term at the National Assembly in Caracas, Friday, Jan. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)