Articles for Lebanon

Geneva/Beirut, 10 October 2014

On 30 July 2014, Alkarama wrote to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to bring to its attention the cases of Tarek Mostafa Marei and Abdel Karim Al Mustafa, two Lebanese citizens sentenced on 6 August 2013 to 15 years in prison after a trial marred with serious violations.

Stop torture of migrants and refugees!

Respect the Convention Against Torture

Today, on June 26, on the occasion of the International Day in support of Victims of Torture, our organizations are calling the authorities of Lebanon to:

Jemaa Ahmad Massini and Alaeddine Moussa Ibrahim are two young Syrians living in Lebanon. They were arrested in February 2009 by agents of the internal security forces in Dora Street, North-East Beirut.

As they were held incommunicado, they might have been subjected to torture in order to elicit confessions. After eight consecutive days of ill-treatment and without any contact with the outside world or legal assistance, the two young men might have given up and sign documents that were presented to the Lebanese judiciary as confessions.

Nahr Al Bared is a Palestinian refugee camp located in Northern Lebanon. From May to September 2007, it was the scene of clashes between the regular Lebanese forces and Fatah Al Islam, an armed radical group, which led to the death of at least 300 civilians and the displacement of thousands of others. Following a vast operation, hundreds of people were arrested and to date, 87 of them are still arbitrarily detained or prosecuted for supposedly supporting this group.

May 20, 2014 - The organizations signatories of this appeal express their deep concern about the new policy of the Lebanese authorities towards Palestinian Refugees from Syria.

Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that « everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution». While Syrians access relatively easily the Lebanese territory, fleeing the bloody conflict in their country, many information show that measures are being taken to prevent Palestinian refugees from Syria to access to and stay in Lebanon.

Reporters Without Borders and the Swiss-based human rights NGO Alkarama deplore the two-week jail sentence that a Beirut military court passed on 9 December on the journalist Rami Aysha on a charge of buying firearms, replacing the six-month sentence he received when tried in absentia last month.

Aysha, who attended the 9 December hearing, left the court a free man because he was deemed to have already served the sentence when detained for a month after his arrest in August 2012.

As we approach the International Human Rights Day on December 10, our organizations join efforts to call again upon the Lebanese authorities to criminalize the practice of torture.

Lebanon ratified the Convention against Torture in 2000 and reaffirmed its resolve to combat torture when acceding to the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture in 2008. However, the practice of torture still prevails.