Roumieh Prison, the largest in Lebanon, near Beirut. (Credit: Marwan Assaf.)
Islamist affiliated detainees protested Thursday at Roumieh prison, Lebanon's largest, demanding an amnesty law and better conditions.
A source within the Internal Security Forces told L'Orient Today that it was a limited protest movement and not a mutiny. A video circulating on social media shows commotion arising from one of the prison buildings.
Prisons in Lebanon suffer from chronic overcrowding and often deplorable detention conditions. Many detainees languish in their cells for years awaiting trial.
In parallel with the protest movement in Roumieh prison, relatives of Islamist detainees protested in front of the Parliament on Thursday demanding this amnesty law, according to our photojournalist on site. The protesters notably held pictures of Ahmad al-Assir, a Salafist sheikh detained and sentenced to death in 2017 for the clashes that took place in June 2013 in Abra between Islamists he led and the Lebanese Army. Eighteen soldiers and eleven militants were killed in these battles. His companions were sentenced to ten years of hard labor. Assir was also sentenced on Aug. 21, 2021, by the military tribunal to twenty years of hard labor for fighting the Lebanese Army in Bhanine, North Lebanon, in 2014.
The protests for the release of the Islamist affiliated detainees led by Assir and general amnesty have intensified following the fall of the Assad regime in Syria and the rise to power in Damascus of a regime led by the former head of the rebel group Hayʼat Tahrir al-Shaam (HTS). The issue of general amnesty is generally pushed off the agenda by authorities for political and communal reasons, with each community in Lebanon demanding amnesty for members linked to various controversial cases.
