Lokman Slim – intellectual, writer and Hezbollah critic – eased his frame into the front of the black Toyota hire car and pointed it in the direction of home.

It was February 2021 and Slim had been visiting a childhood friend in his ancestral village in southern Lebanon.

He was well aware that every journey he undertook was fraught with danger. More than a dozen other prominent critics of Hezbollah or its allies in the Syrian government had met violent ends over the previous 16 years.

To make matters worse, Slim was a Shia Muslim, albeit a secular, liberal one. For a Shia movement such as Hezbollah, taking criticism from Lebanon’s Sunni Muslim, Christian or Druze communities was one thing. For a fellow Shia to oppose the group openly was naked treachery.

In the preceding months, the threats had worsened. Posters had been glued to the door of his house calling him a traitor. Hezbollah supporters would gather in his garden to issue catcalls.

US diplomats had quietly urged him to leave the country, even offering him a green card. Slim refused, instead issuing a statement saying that if he did die, Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader who would eventually be killed in an Israeli air strike late last month, should be held responsible.