Daily star - CLDH Activists protest human rights violations on anti torture day - June 26,2010

BEIRUT: When Majed (not his real name) was picked up by the police for drug dealing, he knew it wasn’t going to be an easy ride. He expected a prison sentence, he got torture. During his interrogation, he says he was punched, kicked, screamed at, and had a body piercing ripped out.
To mark the International Day against Torture, commemorated annually on June 26, a handful of human-rights activists held a small protest in Beirut’s Downtown on Friday urging the Lebanese government to criminalize torture. Forming a human chain to express their solidarity with survivors of ill-treatment, the protestors stood in front of a banner reading: “No Torture.”
While the Lebanese penal code criminalizes physical violence, the word “torture” is not used and has yet to be clearly defined, said Wadih al-Asmar of the Lebanese Center for Human Rights (CLDH), which organized the protest.
He said a number of detainees, including those suspected of terrorism, collaborating with Israel and drug dealing, have claimed their interrogators tortured them, either through physical violence or food or sleep deprivation. “It happens a lot,” Asmar said. “Most of those carrying out the torture think this is the only way to get a confession.”
According to CLDH, detainees claim to have been subjected to torture at local police stations, the Information Branch of the Internal Security Forces and the Military Intelligence branch of the Defense Ministry.
But there have been almost no convictions against those who carry out torture. In 2008, Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud ordered an investigation into allegations of torture within the prison system. Information from the investigation is not yet available to the public, however.
“Once torture is used during investigation, the confessions of suspects should not be taken into account” by the judiciary, CLDH said. “Unfortunately most judges do not take into account this provision.”
Lebanon became a signatory to the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in 2000, but it has not yet moved to fulfill a number of its provisions. Lebanon is still to submit a report detailing how it is implementing the convention.
“It is the job of the Lebanese Government to formulate a law that protects [those in Lebanon] from torture,” said Asmar, noting this was especially important as a number of MPs had themselves been subject to torture.
CLDH runs a center to rehabilitate survivors of torture to assist those abused by militias during Lebanon’s 1975-1990 Civil War, during Syria’s tutelage over Lebanon, or by the police. The center also assists refugees, asylum seekers and other foreigners who have been tortured here or abroad.
In December 2009, Lebanon missed a deadline to establish a national institution to prevent torture, as required by the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture (CAT). The protocol, which Lebanon signed in 2008, is the first of its kind in international human rights legislation and obliges the Government to set up an institution within one year. Lebanon signed CAT in 2000.
Although a committee established by Justice Minister Ibrahim Najjar submitted a proposal on how to establish the institution, nothing has come of it yet.
CLDH called on Beirut to uphold Article 22 of CAT by recognizing the jurisdiction of the UN’s Committee against Torture to review and oversee individual complaints.