BEIRUT: Lebanon has missed a December 22 deadline for setting up a national institution to prevent torture, a group of Lebanese and international human rights organizations said Wednesday. The government should move quickly to consider a proposal commissioned by the Justice Ministry that would address the issue, the groups said.
A year ago, Lebanon signed the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture (OPCAT). The protocol requires the government to set up a mechanism within a year to prevent torture through regular visits to the country’s detention centers.
Former Justice Minister Ibrahim Najjar set up a committee on June 20, including some members of nongovernmental organizations, to draft a proposal to set up the program, and the committee submitted its proposal to the Justice Ministry on September 30. But the government has taken no further steps since then.
“The Justice Ministry took an important step when it created the committee, but now it has to finish what it started. The next step is to send the proposal to the Cabinet,” the human rights groups said.
The groups that issued the press release are Human Rights Watch, Frontiers Ruwad Association, Al-Karama for Human Rights, Association Libanaise pour l’Education et la Formation (ALEF), Lebanese Center for Human Rights (CLDH), Restart Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture, Middle East Council of Churches (MECC), and Caritas Lebanon Migrant Center.
The optional protocol is the first international human rights instrument that seeks to prevent torture and other forms of ill-treatment by establishing a system of regular visits to places of detention carried out by independent international and national bodies.
While Lebanese law prohibits torture, a number of detainees, including suspected Islamists and suspected spies for Israel, have told human rights groups that their interrogators beat and tortured them. – Reuters
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