The kidnapped soldiers’ crisis could be resolved in a matter of days if the judiciary showed the will and held the trials of the Islamists imprisoned at Roumieh, MP Walid Jumblatt said Sunday.
“The country’s security is more important than some technical judicial details,” he said, addressing Justice Minister Ashraf Rifi. “Quicken the trials, and let’s get rid of this nightmare.”
“Whatever the charges are, in such an exceptional situation, a special session could be prepared and the trials could be finished in three to four days,” he added, saying he had been told so by “one of Lebanon’s top judges.”
Speaking during a visit to the family of kidnapped soldier Sayf Debian in Mazraat al-Chouf, Jumblatt questioned why the trials had been stalled for so long.
“The cases go back to the events of Donnieh in 2000, and then to Nahr al-Bared’s incidents in 2007,” he said. “We are in 2014, so why haven’t they been tried yet?”
Jumblatt has been vocal in calling to speed up the Islamists' trials to resolve the matter of releasing the troops kidnapped by the Nusra Front and ISIS during the Arsal clashes.
He said his would allow those innocent among the prisoners, or the ones who had already served their potential sentence while awaiting trial, to walk out and thus to “lift this huge burden.”
“Let the innocent be acquitted and the guilty be convicted,” he said.
The Druze leader added that there are around 400 Islamists detained in Roumieh, but only 27 files have so far been investigated.
A special court was built next to Roumieh Prison because of the difficulty in transporting detainees from the facility to Beirut’s Justice Palace, he explained, but despite that, the trials were not launched.
“The response came from some judges to say that they do not dare to go to Roumieh’s prison,” he said.
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