Police sweep notorious Roumieh Prison after Tripoli suicide attack
The Daily Star/Jan. 12, 2015
BEIRUT: Lebanese police entered Roumieh Prison in force Monday, emptying out the prison’s notorious Bloc B after intercepting calls between Islamist prisoners and members of the cell behind Saturday’s suicide bombings in Tripoli, a security source told The Daily Star.
“We just ended the legend of Roumieh Prison,” Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk said in a press conference Monday, noting that a large part of the Jabal Mohsen attack was managed from the Bloc B building.
Investigations probing Saturday’s Tripoli bombing led security forces to intercept calls between Islamist inmates in Bloc B and the two suicide bombers who carried out the twin attack which killed at least nine people and wounded more than 30, Machnouk said. He also reiterated that preliminary investigations indicate the two suicide bombers were affiliated to ISIS, despite the Nusra Front’s claim of responsibility in which it named the bombers before their identities were publicly revealed.
The Internal Security Forces had announced that the plan was to move some prisoners out of the bloc, but The Daily Star’s security source said a decision was made to clear all cells after witnessing the great damage to the prison’s infrastructure. Bloc B is well-known for holding many suspected and convicted Islamist militants who manage to operate with relative impunity from inside the prison. Machnouk said the nine-hour operation which was planned three months in advance, was carried out “at the right time.” Monday’s sudden raid came as result of a “political decision,” he added.
The ISF started its operation at 7 a.m., and a security perimeter has been imposed around Roumieh, the security source said. As the operation got underway, Lebanese Army helicopters hovered at low altitudes above the overcrowded complex. The source stressed that the operation’s purpose was first to separate prisoners in well-monitored cells and to end the previous chaos, where they had illicit access to mobile phones and the Internet.
“Security forces have seized all phones,” Machnouk said, adding that the move served to “stop a process of communication that was facilitating terrorism.”
Prisoners who had created paths between cells and destroyed prison doors were moved to the newly rehabilitated Bloc D, the source said, adding that a group of the prisoners was also transferred to the ISF’s main headquarters in the Beirut district of Ashrafieh.
The ISF said some of the prisoners burned their mattresses in protest but no casualties were recorded.
“This operation is going as planned, very calmly,” the ISF said. “The Internal Security Forces assures the families of the prisoners that they are all fine.”
Machnouk and the ISF said some prisoners had links to the twin suicide bombing which targeted a majority Alawite neighborhood in Tripoli.
The Nusra Front, which along with ISIS is holding 25 Lebanese servicemen captive near the border with Syria, threatened to resume killing the captives in response to the Roumieh raid. “Due to the deterioration of the security situation in Lebanon, you will hear some surprises about the destiny of our war captives, so wait for it,” an account affiliated with the Nusra Front in Qalamoun tweeted late Monday morning.
In the afternoon, the same account showed a picture of a dozen captives laying face down in the snow and five gunmen standing behind them with a caption that read: “Who will pay the price?”
Machnouk downplayed the Nusra Front’s threat to harm the 25 Lebanese captives, saying that “Nusra wouldn’t hurt the servicemen because security forces didn’t mistreat the prisoners.” The Muslim Scholars Committee meanwhile called for “mediation” between the prisoners and the government to ease tensions after the raid. Committee spokesman Sheikh Adnan Amamma told The Daily Star that the salafist body urges Progressive Socialist Party leader Walid Jumblatt to appoint Health Minister Wael Abu Faour to mediate between the inmates and the Interior Ministry. Amamma said the committee opposed the government treating all Islamist inmates as if they were affiliated to the Nusra Front or ISIS “when many are innocent of any terrorist crime.”
In light of news of the crackdown in Roumieh, some relatives of Islamist prisoners attempted to block roads at Tripoli’s Abu Ali roundabout but the Lebanese Army quickly intervened to disperse the crowd and open the roads, the source said. A grenade blast was later heard in Bab al-Tabbaneh area in Tripoli around 10 a.m., while people riding a Renault Rapid car were stopped by the Army for using a loudspeaker to call for protests and road closures while driving through the area. In the north Lebanon region of Minnieh, a group of men blocked the main highway near the residence of Future Movement MP Kazem al-Khair to protest the Roumieh raid.
Machnouk, who represents the Future Movement in the Cabinet, has been overseeing the operation from inside the prison. Roumieh’s Block B holds around 900 prisoners, including more than 300 who are labeled as terrorists by security forces. Excluding Lebanese prisoners, most inmates in Block B are Syrians and Palestinians – though other Arab and non-Arab nationals are also present. The block also boasts a collection of dangerous individuals accused of belonging to extreme Islamist movements such as ISIS; Al-Qaeda and its Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front; and Fatah al-Islam, among others. These operatives have been arrested in raids carried out by security sources and following armed confrontations with the Lebanese Army.
