March 29, 2010 - The Daily Star - Lebanon Rights watchdog urges Tripoli to disclose information on missing

Statement comes ahead of two-day Arab League summit in Libya

By Dalila Mahdawi
Daily Star staff

BEIRUT: Libya should disclose information on the whereabouts of a Lebanese cleric and other missing individuals, a human rights watchdog group said on Friday.
In a statement released ahead of the Arab Summit, which began this weekend in Tripoli, Human Rights Watch (HRW) also urged the Libyan authorities to make public information about hundreds of missing Libyan prisoners.
“One of the themes of this Arab League summit is reconciliation,” said HRW Middle East and North Africa director Sarah Leah Whitson. “Libya should use this opportunity to inform the families who have been suffering the pain of not knowing where their loved ones are,” she added.
The statement came ahead of a two-day Arab summit, which began Saturday, held in Libya for the first time ever. The choice of location aggravated a long-running diplomatic row with Lebanon over the disappearance of senior Shiite Lebanese cleric Imam Musa al-Sadr 32 years ago in Tripoli.
Iranian-born Sadr, together with his two companions Abbas Badreddine and Mohammad Yaqoub, disappeared during an official trip to Libya in August 1978. The Lebanese widely blame Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi for ordering the men’s disappearance, but Tripoli denies the allegations. Libya has repeatedly claimed Sadr, who was the spiritual and political leader of the Movement of the Deprived in Lebanon (Amal), had already left for Italy before going missing.
Rome has maintained Sadr never arrived there, though in 2004 the Italian authorities returned a passport found in Italy belonging to the cleric.
Sadr’s disappearance prompted Libya to close its embassy in Lebanon, with relations between the countries effectively severed. Gadhafi, who has not visited Beirut since Sadr vanished, was indicted by the Lebanese authorities along with six other Libyans in August 2008 for the imam’s disappearance.
“Disappearances are a continuous crime for which the Libyan government is responsible,” Whitson said. Heeding demands by Shiite politicians and religious figures, Lebanese President Michel Sleiman boycotted this weekend’s summit in protest to Tripoli’s stalling on the cleric’s disappearance. In his place, Sleiman sent Lebanon’s ambassador to Cairo and the Arab League, Khaled Ziyadeh.
Another leading human rights organization, Amnesty International (AI), also used the summit to pressure Tripoli over Sadr’s whereabouts. According to a statement by the Supreme Islamic Shiite Council, AI reportedly sent a letter to the Arab summit highlighting Libyan “complicity” in Sadr’s disappearance. Although an AI official in Beirut contacted by The Daily Star could not confirm or deny the existence of the letter, it reportedly faults the atmosphere of impunity among Arab League members.
“Amnesty International points out that the legacy of impunity abounds at the forthcoming Arab summit and that the conference will be held in the absence of a high-level Lebanese delegation because of the Libyan government’s alleged complicity in the forced disappearance of a prominent Shiite cleric in 1978,” the council said.
The letter is also said to urge Arab leaders to “address human rights violations and continuing impunity in the Arab world.” – With AFP