Justin Salhani
In Roumieh prison, there are some prisoners who raise hell on a daily basis, giving both the guards and their fellow prisoners trouble. But while these prisoners are the most consistently violent and troublesome, they are far from the most dangerous. “Islamists need to be watched closely,” said a senior security source, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to share such information with the media. He was speaking to The Daily Star about the inmates of the notorious Block B. “Unlike the other blocks, these prisoners don’t act up every day. They may stay quiet for days and then when you least expect it they will try to pull off something big.”
Roumieh’s Block B holds slightly fewer than 900 prisoners, of whom over 300 are labeled as terrorists by security forces.
The security source said that, excluding Lebanese prisoners, most inmates in Block B were Syrians and Palestinians – though other Arab and non-Arab nationalities were also present. The block also boasts a collection of dangerous individuals from a who’s-who of the world’s most extreme Islamist movements like ISIS, Al-Qaeda and its Syrian affiliate the Nusra Front, and Fatah al-Islam, among others. These operatives have been arrested in raids carried out by security sources and following armed confrontations with the Lebanese Armed Forces.
These inmates plan their acts of rebellion against the prison system more carefully than the ones found in neighboring detention blocks and the security source said that the most worrying time was often the calm before the storm.
The fact that Islamist inmates often enter prison with others from the same extremist groups only exacerbates the danger. “A lot of Islamists already know each other so they are more organized, unlike the normal prisoners, who come in not knowing anyone,” the source said.
Certain terror networks may now overlap as a direct result of their members’ incarceration inside Roumieh, as Islamists develop dangerous new contacts among their fellow inmates.
Block B is more tightly guarded than other blocks, though the source refused to give specifics.
The source said that the Block B inmates were always planning something, keeping the guards on high alert, but their plots were regularly thwarted. The wardens contribute to foiling these plans with their intricate knowledge of each prisoner’s history and character. But a major concern may be what the inmates plan using a technology that wardens aren’t able to access.
The source admitted that while the prisoners are legally forbidden from owning and operating their own mobile phones, many do possess such devices. To make matters worse, these phones also are believed to have access to the Internet – allowing them to send and receive messages to and from their networks in the outside world. The source said that telephone conversations and data were not monitored by officers at the prison – which, worryingly, means that officers could be in the dark about coordinated threats. When asked whether military intelligence or other agencies monitored the information, the source shrugged, and said: “It is possible, but I don’t know.”
The last couple of years have seen attacks staged on other prisons around the Middle East holding Islamist prisoners in attempts to free Islamists. The source said he was not particularly concerned about a similar attack on Roumieh, but nonetheless security forces remain vigilant.
“There is always information circulating about a possible attack, not just in Roumieh but everywhere in Lebanon,” the source said.
Radical Islamist groups holed up on the outskirts of Arsal, a village near Lebanon’s border with Syria, have previously demanded the release of Islamist prisoners in Roumieh, and have offered a prisoner swap; these groups are currently holding hostage at least 21 Lebanese police and army soldiers.
The source said that the issue of prisoner exchange was purely political. “If the phone rings and we receive an order we simply follow it,” he said. “We have no information about the process.”
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