November 5, 2009 - The Daily Star - Lebanon Right groups praise court decision on disappeared

BEIRUT: A recent decision by Lebanese judicial authorities to make public the results of an investigation into disappeared persons is an encouraging first step toward recognizing the right of families of victims of enforced disappearances during the 1975-90 Civil War, five leading international human-rights groups said Wednesday.

On October 23, the Judge of Summary Procedures of Beirut issued a decision calling on theCabinet’ secretariat to provide the court with the unpublished full report and results of the investigations conducted by the Official Commission of Investigation into the Fate of the Abducted and Disappeared Persons in 2000.

A lawyer for the families of the disappeared said the families will be able to see the report when it is handed to the court.

In a statement, the International Center for Transitional Justice, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the International Federation for Human Rights, and the Euro-Mediterranean’s Federation against Forced Disappearances called on the council’s secretariat to comply with the order by providing copies of the report and its records to the court and then publishing both. So far, the Lebanese authorities have only made public a three-page summary of the commission’s work.

“Thousands of Lebanese have waited for more than a generation to find out what happened to their loved ones during the turmoil in their country. This decision may finally allow the families to identify and seek official protection for mass graves sites,” the groups said. “It paves the way for exhumations that could finally reveal the fate of missing loved ones.”

The preliminary court decision came as part of a lawsuit filed on April 29 by two Lebanese NGOs, the Committee of the Families of the Kidnapped and Disappeared in Lebanon (CFKDL) and Support of Lebanese in Detention and Exile (SOLIDE). The lawsuit aims at locating and protecting the three mass graves mentioned in the summary of the commission’s findings, released in July 2000. The October 23 decision pertains to one of these sites: the St. Demetrius Cemetery in Beirut, also known as Mar Mitr.

“The Cabinet’ secretariat should comply with this court order and show the families that the state of Lebanon is ready to assist them in bringing an end to their long search for information about their missing relatives,” the rights groups said.

The government established the commission for a six-month term in January 2000 to investigate the fate of those who disappeared during the 15-year Civil War.

It received some 2,046 applications from families of victims. Its summary report said “bodies were discarded in different places in Beirut, Mount Lebanon, the North, Bekaa and the South; and some were buried in mass graves.”

It mentioned three burial sites specifically – the St. Demetrius Cemetery in Beirut’s Achrafieh neighborhood, the Martyrs’ Cemetery in Horsh Beirut, and the English Cemetery in Beirut’s Tahwita neighborhood – and reported some bodies were dumped in the Mediterranean.

The report concluded that all those missing for more than four years should be considered dead, and instructed the families to apply to the judicial authorities to register the death of their relatives. No measures have been taken to protect the sites of mass graves.

It is thought 17,000 persons disappeared in Lebanon between 1975 and 1990. Families of the victims have been struggling to find out the fate of relatives since the 1970s, in the absence of any concrete action by the Lebanese authorities.

Lebanon has signed the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance but has yet to ratify it.