BEIRUT: Parliament’s Administration and Justice and Human Rights committees convened Thursday to discuss the situation in Lebanon’s prisons after the country’s largest prison saw several days of riots.
Attending the meeting were caretaker Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud and caretaker Justice Minister Ibrahim Najjar, Prosecutor General Said Mirza, Metn MP Sami Gemayel, Zahrani MP Michel Musa, top security officials and other members of the committees.
After the meeting, Musa said that the committees had convened at the order of Speaker Nabih Berri to discuss the problems in the prison system.
Inmates of Roumieh prison staged protests and set mattresses ablaze in an uprising that began over the weekend. Among the main demands they made were alleviating living conditions, passing an amnesty law, reducing sentences and accelerating trial procedures.
According to Baroud, only 721 out of 3,700 inmates in Roumieh are serving sentences.
“Minister Najjar and Judge Mirza promised … to hasten trials and to assist judges financially, technically and practically [to enable them to accelerate] issuing verdicts,” Musa said, adding that swift measures have been taken in this regard.
Musa said that during a meeting Wednesday, the Higher Relief Committee allocated LL7.5 billion for addressing problems in prisons, some of which would be used to build a courtroom near prisons “to avoid transporting prisoners for long periods of time, especially since some have special conditions.”
Meanwhile, Gemayel called for investigating corruption inside the Roumieh prison.
“Some [prisoners] have mobile phones, TVs, receive food from outside [the prison] and their families visit them more frequently than permitted, while 10 and 20 prisoners live in one cell and are dealt with harshly,” Gemayel explained.
“We call upon the Interior Ministry to carry out investigations with all those who run the prison and to clarify the issue in public,” Gemayel added.
The Kataeb (Phalange) party official said passing a general amnesty bill would lead to a larger problem.
“This means that we are forgiving criminals and turning them into fugitives,” Gemayel said, adding that the solution lied in building new prisons.
Baalbek-Hermel MP Nawwar Saheli, the rapporteur of the Administration and Justice Committee, questioned reasons for the delay in securing a sum of LL500 billion, which Baroud had asked the Cabinet for in January 2009 to address prison problems.
“Unfortunately, they [the Higher Relief Committee] approved yesterday [the provision] of LL7.5 billion, and I won’t go into details,” Saheli said. – The Daily Star
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