End torture conclusively
The Daily Star/ June. 23, 2015
There is no argument when it comes to labeling torture a crime – it’s an unacceptable, barbaric practice that says a great deal about the society that tolerates it. Whether it’s being committed against people who have merely been detained, or those convicted of serious crimes, torture is a violation of human dignity and it has no place in a civilized country. The recent emergence of video footage showing the physical abuse of inmates at Roumieh prison has had two contrasting repercussions. On the positive side, the issue of torture is once again part of the national debate and media coverage, generating condemnations from all sides. More importantly, government officials have taken prompt action against the perpetrators who appeared in the video and are vowing to ensure that the practice ends, once and for all. The justice and interior ministers’ statements are encouraging and their actions should be monitored so that no prisoner, whatever his background or affiliation, suffers such physical abuse. But the incident also generated negative fallout – some politicians shamelessly exploiting the video to score points against rivals. They conveniently forget that nearly every major faction at one time or another could be held responsible for allowing such behavior, whether inside or outside state institutions. Instead of focusing on the tip of the iceberg – the latest shocking video – they should come up with ways to melt the iceberg itself. Lebanon has long suffered from a pervasive culture of permissiveness when it comes to physical abuse and torture, and few political factions can claim their hands are clean. They should be ensuring that torture ends, and not pretending that only their rivals are to blame.
Officials vow strict punishment for abusive Roumieh guards
The Daily Star/ Jun. 23, 2015 |
BEIRUT: Top officials moved to contain the fallout from a torture scandal in Lebanon’s Roumieh prison Monday, with Prime Minister Tammam Salam and Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk promising to hold all those involved accountable. Leaked videos surfaced on social media sites over the weekend, showing members of the Internal Security Forces brutally beating Islamist prisoners. The scandal sparked nationwide protests, with hundreds of demonstrators calling on Machnouk to resign.
Machnouk vowed “strict” punishment for the guards involved, stressing that the individual acts of some ISF members did not represent the whole institution. “Investigation into the torture of detainees is underway, and we will not stop until judicial verdicts are issued against all who participated,” Machnouk told reporters at Roumieh prison, following a brief tour of the detention center. Machnouk said he had delivered two messages to the ISF officers he met at Roumieh.
“This perpetration, done by a group of guards, shouldn’t undermine even for one moment the prestige and the stature of the Internal Security Forces. This is a security institution responsible for all Lebanese. An error or perpetration of a crime does not justify attacks against the ISF or any of its services.”He said the second part of his message was that any member of the ISF violating the human rights of any detainee would be punished under the jurisdiction of the Interior Ministry. The videos show guards beating a handful of handcuffed and kneeling prisoners with a baton, and groping and kicking them in the face.
Machnouk said that the number of ISF guards arrested in the case had risen to six, and that three of the guards were Christian and the three others were Muslim. He said that during his tour he met with prisoners who appeared in the videos including Sheikh Omar Atrash, Qutaibah al-Asaad and Wael al-Samad. “I listened to the three prisoners who appeared in the video. Indeed, they were subjected to an unjustified and abnormal assault at Block D,” Machnouk added. “I will not allow … any type of mistakes for any reason against any prisoner, regardless of what he’s accused of or his affiliation.” Machnouk also warned that those attacking security institutions over the incidents were only serving the cause of extremism.
The minister also addressed the families of inmates, saying, “This mistake will not reoccur … all human rights will be secured for your sons.”Machnouk dismissed allegations that Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi was behind the leak of the videos. The torture videos sparked protests in predominantly Sunni areas in Tripoli, Beirut, Sidon and the Bekaa Valley, with demonstrators calling on Machnouk to resign. Tripoli MP Mohammad Kabbara, Machnouk’s colleague in the Future bloc, also urged him to step down. Machnouk said he was ready to resign if such a move would prevent outbreaks of extremism. But Nader Hariri, the director of the office of former premier Saad Hariri, visited Machnouk Monday, and expressed the Future Movement’s support.
The footage was shot during last April’s prison riot when prisoners blocked entrances, set mattresses on fire and took 12 guards and two doctors hostage. The riot occurred in Roumieh’s Block D. Prisoners had demanded to be transferred back to Block B, where they had enjoyed considerable autonomy before the ISF forcibly relocated them to stricter quarters in January. It took the ISF days to quell the rioting. But Machnouk was adamant that allowing “terrorists” to control Block B again “will not happen.”Salam described the inmates’ torture as “disgraceful and immoral.”
The beating of prisoners, the premier said, “violates the Lebanese Constitution, which guarantees human rights,” as well as Lebanese laws that acknowledge the rights of prisoners irrespective of the charges brought against them. The remarks were issued in a statement following a meeting he chaired to discuss the scandal which included Rifi, Machnouk, State Prosecutor Samir Hammoud and ISF chief Maj. Gen. Ibrahim Basbous. Salam urged judicial and security agencies to proceed with investigations in a “professional and transparent” manner, to identify the details of the incident and determine who was responsible.
He also urged the punishment of the security personnel who resorted to this “unjustifiable use of violence,” and warned against exploiting the incident to attack the ISF. Rifi dismissed claims that he was behind the leak, saying that such claims were “bankrupt,” and described his ties with Machnouk as “good.” Hammoud told The Daily Star that two of the guards carried out the beatings, one filmed the incidents, and two others who knew about them failed to come forward. Hammoud said the last two had also received and published photos of the incident online. “The judiciary will take very strict punitive measures against the perpetrators and anyone else who is proven, through investigation, to have executed, participated in, or incited the crime,” he said. “There will be no political cover for anyone.” Hammoud said the crime was not religiously or politically motivated, and asserted that the violation represented an “isolated crime” and not a systematic practice carried out by the ISF’s Information Branch. For his part, Rifi told The Daily Star that he had “full faith” in the investigation, and that only the judiciary was authorized to punish those accused of “violating basic principles of human rights.”He expressed his hope that the incident would lead to the end of torture in Lebanese prisons and detention centers.
A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on June 23, 2015, on page 1.
Torture runs rampant across the board
Philip Issa/The Daily Star/June. 23, 2015
BEIRUT: The scenes that emerged from Roumieh last weekend are just the latest in a troubling history of torture and human rights violations in Lebanon’s prisons and detention centers. Two videos circulating on social media sites showed members of the Internal Security Forces beating, kicking and verbally abusing kneeling, handcuffed inmates in the overcrowded prison. But lawyers, human rights advocates and international agencies have known for years that abuses are widespread and systemic. “What we saw on the tapes is just a small part of what is going on in the Roumieh and Rihaniyeh prisons,” said Tarek Shandab, a lawyer to several Islamist inmates. Roumieh is Lebanon’s largest and most notorious civil prison, and Rihaniyeh is the country’s most widely known military one.
A recent United Nations report implicated the Internal Security Forces and the Directorate of Military Intelligence in routinely torturing inmates. U.N. investigators found several car batteries and a wheelchair by the interrogation room at the Defense Ministry headquarters in Beirut, for example. Military personnel said the wheelchair was “to carry disabled people.”Local enforcement agencies and General Security regularly torture detainees as well, according to Human Rights Watch, especially on suspicions of homosexuality and drug use. “The problem is much more pervasive than the U.N. report has shown,” said Nadim Houry, the deputy director of the NGO’s Middle East and North Africa Division. “The torture tends to happen during interrogation,” before detainees have been brought to trial, he added.
Detainees suspected of belonging to armed Islamist groups tend to suffer the worst abuse. “Suspected Islamists are always testifying in court of the worst interrogations and torture and beatings,” Shandab said. “It can’t be all fabricated, as what we saw yesterday confirms.”In June 2013, Nader Bayoumi, 35, died in Army custody after intelligence officers detained him on suspicion of supporting the Salafist Sheikh Ahmad Assir in Sidon. The Army was engaged at that time in fierce clashes with the sheikh’s loyalists that left over 40 soldiers and gunmen dead. Bayoumi’s body was returned to his family showing signs of severe abuse and internal hemorrhage. It is one of the few documented cases of authorities torturing a detainee to death. Torture is more likely to befall detainees belonging to marginalized groups or without social connections, as well, according to a Human Rights Watch investigation completed in 2013.
“The police do little to hide their disdain of drug users, sex workers and LGBT people,” the report said. “Physical violence was not just used to extract confessions but also as a form of punishment, discipline and behavioral correction.”“We’ve documented some of the police abuse against vulnerable groups – migrant domestic workers accused of theft, or drug users that don’t have wasta [connections], or Syrian janitors,” Houry said. Former Justice Minister Shakib Qortbawi said detention authorities have exercised torture “for a long time,” but “not every police officer tortures every [detainee].” The untrammeled abuses threaten to aggravate social unrest. In Tripoli, radical Sunni sheikhs headed a rally of Islamists, accusing the Future Movement and Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk of turning the mechanisms of the state against the country’s Sunnis.
Torture also undermines the rule of law and court judgments. “Torture is against our law and contravenes human rights,” said Qortbawi, a former head of the Beirut Bar Association.“Some policemen think torture is the only way to get the truth. The victim thinks, ‘please don’t hit me, I’ll tell you whatever you want.’ So people testify in court that they’ve been tortured,” Qortbawi added. “And the judge will have to figure out what is truthful and throw out what is not. And this takes time.”“Torture is a crime under Lebanese law and obviously under international law as well,” Houry said. “It corrupts the entire judicial process because then your confessions are obtained under duress.”
Authorities sometimes excuse transgressions, saying torture is a necessary implement of the security services. The government repudiated the 2014 U.N. report on torture, saying it failed to consider Lebanon’s position “in the region’s highly dangerous and sensitive atmosphere and in the shadow of terrorist threats.” But the practice is counterproductive. “It’s been proven time and again in many countries that ultimately the best fight against terror is good, legal investigative work that does not rely on torture,” Houry said. Reports of torture in detention, Houry said, are “the best recruiting tools for jihadi groups.”Law professor and former Justice Minister Ibrahim Najjar described the videos as shocking spoke about a correlation between torture and extremism. “We’re supposed to rehabilitate them,” Najjar said of the inmates. “But torture turns them into animals. They cannot reintegrate into society.” Prosecutors have convicted only a handful of abusive officers.
“If there is no case, what can I do?” Qortbawi asked. “Most of the time nobody knows exactly what is going on.”The Beirut Bar Association has asked the government to move prison authority out of the hands of the Interior Ministry and into those of the Justice Ministry. “I recommend it,” Qortbawi said. “But it’s not a sufficient solution. You need to train officers and you need to change the guard’s mentality.” “We have to change our mentality,” he said. “Human rights are much more important than trying to extract some information from a prisoner.”
Tripoli residents fear repercussions of Roumieh beatings
Misbah al-Ali|/he Daily Star/June. 23, 2015
TRIPOLI, Lebanon: Leaked videos of guards beating inmates in Roumieh Prison have dramatically raised tensions on the streets of Tripoli. Fury over the incident and a fear of reprisals threatens to turn the northern city into a powder keg.Rumors swirled about the circumstances of the videos and the identities of those who carried out the beatings – with some of the victims appearing to be Islamists – and fears of retaliation have left residents uneasy. Tripoli residents briefly took to the streets Sunday evening to protest the footage’s gruesome scenes. The videos, posted to social media sites over the weekend, show members of the Internal Security Forces beating kneeling, handcuffed prisoners with batons, and groping and kicking them in the face. The circulation of the names of two members of the ISF who appeared in the video has created chaos. One is reportedly from Tripoli’s Mina and the other from Jbeil. There is a serious fear that the families of ISF members could be subject to retaliatory violence. A picture of the ISF member from Mina and his relatives emerged on Facebook amid calls for revenge, prompting local Mukhtar Abdullah al-Baqqa to appeal to residents for calm.
“The city of Mina is a model of Muslim-Christian coexistence,” Baqqa said. He emphasized that residents are committed to national unity. “The aim of these rumors against the citizens of Mina is to cause strife, which we will not fall [prey] to, because we believe in one government,” he added. Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk said Sunday that the video was shot during April’s prison riot, when prisoners blocked entrances, set mattresses on fire, and took 12 guards and two doctors hostage. Families of Islamist detainees in Roumieh have suggested that the video is part of a series, and that other videos exist which document the torture of detainees following the raids that ended the riot. The situation in Tripoli could become even more complex if such videos are released or influential militia leaders housed in the prison are known to have been abused.
Saad al-Masri and Ziad al-Saleh, better known as Ziad Allouki, influential militia commanders active in Bab al-Tabbaneh, were arrested last year in Tripoli’s security crackdown. Both are now being held in Roumieh, and sources have alleged that Masri’s mother has seen a video documenting the physical torture of her son in the prison. Though the men were incarcerated last April, neither has yet been sentenced. Khaldoun Sharif, a Tripoli politician, expressed regret at the unease being felt in the city, and said he held the government responsible, singling out the interior and justice ministers. “Originally there should’ve been [more] responsibility in dealing with the case, especially as, at the time, different political positions welcomed the Roumieh Prison operation and the elimination of the Islamist emirate inside,” he said. “But there should’ve been recognition that torture operations did take place and [they should have] solved it.” There is also concern that the leaked video could provoke acts of revenge by ISIS and the Nusra Front against the Lebanese hostages they are holding on the outskirts of Arsal.
ISIS captured 11 Lebanese servicemen during an incursion into Arsal last August, and has since beheaded two of them. The Nusra Front holds another 16 servicemen. ISIS has reportedly issued a direct threat to the family of captured soldier Ibrahim Mgheit in response to the torture revelations. Mgheit’s brother, Nizam, announced that he received a call from ISIS that included a threat that what happened in Roumieh Prison would not be allowed to pass without repercussions for the Lebanese government.
Sources close to the Cabinet crisis cell working on the case of the kidnapped servicemen said the group was extremely concerned that the hostages might be subject to acts of revenge. The Nusra Front and ISIS have both sought the release of the Islamist prisoners in Roumieh, and another source claimed that ISIS is trying to drag the Lebanese government toward direct negotiations.
Indirect talks with the Nusra Front, led by General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim, have made significant progress, and a deal is waiting to be finalized. But negotiations with ISIS are currently at a standstill. Last week, self-proclaimed mediator Sheikh Wissam Masri received assurances by phone on the condition of soldiers held by ISIS. This, however, was before the video was leaked. “There isn’t any communication between ISIS and us,” Masri said. “I got a call from the parents of the captured soldiers, and I told them that I can’t move unless I am officially commissioned by the Lebanese government, and I’m waiting for an answer regarding this.” Masri called for all parties to be mindful of the sensitivity of the issue, and stressed the need to open negotiations in order to de-escalate the crisis.
