“The electrocution of a detainee, […] starvation, deprivation of medical care, indefinite detention without trial”: the Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency this week declassified archival documents “showing the extreme living conditions of Arab prisoners” in the former Israeli prison of Khiam, in southern Lebanon, reports the Israeli daily Ha’Aretz.
From 1985 to 2000 – the year the Israeli army withdrew from Lebanon – thousands of Lebanese and Palestinians were held prisoner behind the walls of the detention center built in this town bordering Israel and run by the army of Liban-Sud, a Lebanese militia auxiliary to Israel.
According to these documents, there were permanently, in this prison, “between 250 and 300 prisoners” belonging to various Lebanese organizations (such as the pro-Iran Shiite party Hezbollah, its ally Amal or the Lebanese Communist Party) and Palestinian organizations (such as Fatah or the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine).
Today, only ruins of the prison remain, destroyed during the war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.
“IDF and Shin Bet involved up to the neck”
Made public following a petition by human rights activists to the Israeli Supreme Court, these exhibits prove “cases of torture and cruel and inhuman punishment”, according to these activists. Damning documents, according to Israeli lawyer Itay Mack:
“Together with the South Lebanon Army, the IDF and the Shin Bet ran a detention and torture center resembling those of military dictatorships in Latin America.”
The fate suffered by the prisoners is already widely known, but these declassified documents above all reveal the degree of involvement of the Israeli army and intelligence services in these abuses.
This is what the legal adviser of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, lawyer Dan Yakir, says in essence:
“The Israeli army, in general, and the Shin Bet, in particular, have been involved up to their necks in the government of the civilian population in southern Lebanon and in the illegal imprisonment of hundreds of detainees for an indefinite period without no legal basis, without judicial review and under cruel conditions that included torture.”