Daily Star - UN torture committee urges full compliance

Human rights groups say Islamists, spies for Israel beaten in custody

By The Daily Star

BEIRUT: The UN’s Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) concluded a 10-day visit to Lebanon on Wednesday.
The visit – STP’s ninth to Lebanon – was aimed at issuing recommendations to the Lebanese government on best practices regarding the establishment of effective safeguards against the risk of torture and ill-treatment, officials said.
The delegation, headed by Hans Draminsky Petersen, was supported by three staff members from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and a UN security officer. It also received support from the UN system in Lebanon, in particular the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
During the visit the SPT delegation held meetings with the Lebanese authorities, including Foreign Minister Ali Shami, Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud, Justice Minister Ibrahim Najjar, and top representatives from the security and army forces.
It also met with State Prosecutor Saeed Mirza and members of the Parliamentary Human Rights Committee, headed by MP Ghassan Moukheiber, as well as representatives of NGOs.
The SPT has a mandate to visit and make recommendations to the authorities to establish effective safeguards against the risk of torture and ill-treatment. The delegation visited a number of civil and military prisons, police stations and detention centers. It also visited the notorious underground retention center in Beirut’s Adlieh district, where a number of migrants and refugees are held arbitrarily.
The SPT also reviewed the treatment of persons deprived of their liberty in Lebanon and the safeguards for their protection against torture and ill-treatment. It conducted private interviews with detainees in various police establishments and inmates in civil and military prisons.
The SPT also visited and conducted interviews in other places where persons are or may be deprived of their liberty.
At the end of the visit, the delegation presented its confidential preliminary observations to the authorities of Lebanon.
Article 401 of the Lebanese Penal Code prohibits torture, stipulating that anyone who “severely beats someone with the desire to obtain a confession about a crime or information regarding it will be imprisoned from three months to three years.”
Nevertheless, human rights groups say many detainees, including suspected Islamists, drug-dealers and suspected collaborators with Israel, have accused their interrogators of beatings and torture. Accountability for torture and ill-treatment in detention remains hard to pin down, however.
In August 2008, Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud launched a probe into allegations of torture and abuse in Lebanese prisons. Results of that investigation have not been made public, however.
Lebanon ratified the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT) in 2000 but has not yet complied with a number of its provisions, notably the submission of a report about steps taken to implement the convention. That report is now almost eight years overdue.
In 2008, Lebanon signed the OPCAT’s Optional Protocol, which obliges the government to set up a mechanism within one year to prevent torture, which among other things, involves regular visits to detention centers. But in December 2009, Beirut missed the deadline for setting up such an institution. During the visit, the SPT met with various interlocutors to discuss the necessity of creating a torture-prevention mechanism.
The SPT was established according to the OPCAT, which entered in force on 22 June 2006. The treaty is the first universal instrument which seeks to prevent torture and other forms of ill-treatment through a system of regular visits to places of deprivation of liberty carried out by independent national and international bodies.
The SPT has two guiding principles – cooperation and confidentiality. As provided for under the OPCAT, the SPT will later communicate its recommendations and observations confidentially to Lebanon. – The Daily Star