If the "riots" that broke out last summer between Roumieh prison guards and the arrested members of Fatah al-Islam and some other
Islamic prisoners, were due to the confusion that struck the security forces in dealing with the phenomenon of Fatah al-Islam, in addition to the "legacy" of some of the media of the incident to suspect motives, according to one security leaders concerned about prisons in Lebanon, then what caused the rebellion that happened yesterday, again, in the prison which includes 4000 prisoner when it does not accommodate more than 1500, and which everyone recognizes its bad inhumane situation?.
Who will answer the question of the true Jurists remaining in Lebanon about the real causes of the rebellion without hiding behind political and religious considerations?!. Khiam Center although rejects what the prisoners did from exercising their influence on the guards and detaining seven of them as hostages and threatening to kill them, but Khiam Center asks about the way the prisoners are being treated by the guards and the officials who do not have enough knowledge as well as the largest number of guards recruited with limited experience. Knowing that the Director General of Internal Security Forces had promised in a meeting with representatives of human rights organizations on March 15 that he asked the government to exempt the Internal Security Forces from the task of managing prisons and to handed over to the Ministry of Justice and that the officers and members of the internal security forces will be subjected gradually to specialized training courses in dealing with prisoners.
There is no doubt that the rebel prisoners had as their first and foremost goal to claim their rights and improve their conditions, and it is wrong to interpret that in other nomenclature. It is as if they do not have rights or that it is not the first rebellion was to change the conditions of imprisonment. But we hope it will be the last with the collective serious efforts of the human rights section of the Directorate General of Internal Security Forces and human rights organizations in Lebanon to work together on field exposure on the circumstances of the prisoners and change it according to humanitarian standards. It is not a serious test only for the human rights section but also to all those who stultify humanity in Lebanon. The center renews its call to the Directorate for allowing concerned human rights associations to enter all prisons in Lebanon to begin developing a plan of integrated and social psychological rehabilitation for the prisoners and guards alike so that yesterday's rebellion a forgotten incident or deleted due to the tension conditions of the country as it happened in Zahle prison time ago.
Once again we say that the Roumieh prison rebellion is an alarming bell to open the file of Lebanese prisons and to improve conditions for prisoners and the application of international standards.
25/04/2008
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