The Daily Star - Interim monitoring system needed to prevent torture: rights groups - March 30, 2011

By Simona Sikimic
Daily Star staff
Wednesday, March 30, 2011

BEIRUT: The ongoing cabinet formation process must not inhibit the adoption of an interim monitoring system to prevent torture, a collection of human-rights groups and lawyers said Tuesday.

“Our objective is to maintain momentum despite government paralysis,” said Suzanne Jabbour, vice president of the United Nations subcommittee on the prevention of torture.

Lebanon is required to establish a National Prevention Mechanism under international law. It ratified the U.N. Convention against Torture and its Optional Protocol, becoming the first Arab state to do so in 2008, but has since “failed to benefit from the ratification,” said the alliance, which is made up of 10 Lebanese non-governmental organizations that focus on human-rights issues.

However, despite the establishment of a committee to formulate a NPM, the draft law introducing an NPM was never submitted to Parliament. Instead, a general draft law establishing the National Human Rights Institution to guard against all abuses was proposed, although this too has also failed to come to a vote, reportedly because of the ongoing political crisis.

While government has been blamed for the malaise surrounding the issue, activists have applauded the work of the country’s Internal Security Forces, which has taken independent steps to root out the practice.

ISF officials have begun conducting surprise visits to jails and are expected to hold a training session on torture prevention Wednesday. The EU-funded scheme will see ISF personnel train Justice Ministry detention center staff on how to avoid and detect abuses.

“We are willing to investigate torture claims,” Gen. Raouf Sayah said at the Tuesday meeting, where he also strongly denied any allegations that the Lebanese Army operated illegal or secret prisons or detention facilities.

But the tentative progress is directly linked to the will of the present ISF general director, Gen. Ashraf Rifi.

“[Rifi] has the political will to combat torture,” said Gen. Charles Mattar, head of the ISF torture monitoring unit.

Without his continued support, the movement for independent monitoring and ongoing system reforms, could be lost, Mattar added.

“We appreciate the initiatives taken by the ISF and they take their work seriously … but we don’t believe that the same institution whose members practice [the abuses] can really monitor itself,” said Jabbour.

Only the establishment of an independent NPM, which could focus on this controversial issue exclusively, would be capable of bringing Lebanon in line with U.N. requirements, he said.

The exact outlines for an NPM, especially one set up in the absence of a sitting government, have not been finalized, but the broad outline would see the committee of experts conduct visits to prisons, gain access to all legal documents, including medical files of detainees, and permit them to view the minutes of interrogation, especially in instances where a suspect suddenly reverses his/her plea.

Evidence collected by NGOs alongside U.N. reports submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council “provide strong evidence that security officials are still practicing torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment in Lebanese detention centers,” the collection of NGOs said earlier this month in an open letter addressed to Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati.