When Mrs Badria Abu Meri was arrested in May 2010, media reported that she had been taken into custody for her own protection. Several weeks before the arrest, a mob lynched a man accused of murder in Mrs Abu Meri's hometown and, as many believed she had instigated the latter to carry out the gruesome homicide, it was said that she might be the object of further acts of self-administered justice. However, it is now apparent that she was in fact quite simply arrested and detained without any legal basis.
On 22 May 2010, Mrs Badria Abu Meri was summoned to Baabda Court House, south-west of Beirut, for questioning regarding her alleged implication in the murder. She states that was beaten and humiliated during this questioning. She was also subjected to a torture method commonly referred to as 'faruj' or 'chicken', during which the detainee is forced into a hunched over position with their wrists tied to a stick inserted behind their knees or to their ankles and on which they are hung before being violently beaten. She reportedly still carries marks of these treatments.
The day following her arrest, Mrs Abu Meri reported to the General Prosecutor that she had been tortured but, to Alkarama's knowledge, no steps were taken by the Lebanese authorities to investigate these allegations. She was then brought to Baabda Women's Prison close to the Court House, a prison originally conceived to accommodate 36 criminal offenders. Due to overcrowding many of them have to sleep on the floor, as the detention center holds up to a 100 detainees, some of whom have never had legal proceedings of any sort, let alone a fair trial.
Mrs Abu Meri is one of these inmates detained without trial. Since her arrest, she has never even been charged. It is only very recently that a lawyer accepted to be her legal counsel, which means that none of the previous interrogation sessions were carried out with a lawyer present. In February 2012, she again told an Investigative Judge about the torture she was subjected to, but Alkarama has no knowledge of investigations undertaken in this regard.