Lebanon’s central prison in Roumieh is currently holding more than double its capacity [Getty/file photo]
More than 100 Syrian detainees in Lebanon’s central prison have begun an open-ended hunger strike demanding to be sent home to complete their trials and prison sentences.
An agreement between Beirut and Damascus to extradite the prisoners to Syria, where an interim government is now in place following the ouster of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December, has not been met, the detainees say.
“The number of hunger strikers is more than 100. We handed over a list of their names to the prison’s administration so it can stop providing them with meals, and report this to Lebanese authorities,” one prisoner told the Saudi-owned Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper.
The prisoners’ “only request” is the implementation of the agreement signed during former Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s visit to Damascus in January, where he met with de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, now Syria’s interim president.
The Syrian foreign ministry announced in a statement during the visit that it had begun procedures to recover all Syrian prisoners held in Lebanon, the Syrian prisoner told Asharq Al-Awsat, adding that the hunger strike would continue until this happens.
A Lebanese security source told the paper that a report of those on the hunger strike was submitted to the Public Prosecution, and the prison’s administration would place the detainees under monitoring to track their health conditions.
“The prison administration provides them [detainees] with meals and water on time, but they refrain from eating,” the unnamed security source said, noting that “all those striking are the inmates of Block B designated for Islamist detainees“.
Most individuals in Lebanon charged or suspected of terrorism are kept in the prison’s notorious Block B.
An unnamed judicial source in Lebanon told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Lebanese judiciary had finalised most cases relating to Syrian detainees who were expected to be handed over to Syria, adding that it was in Lebanon’s interest to deport them to reduce economic, health, security and logistical burdens placed on the Lebanese state, and solve the overcrowding problem in the country’s prisons.
The central prison, otherwise known as Roumieh prison because of the town it’s located in east of Beirut, was built in the late 1960s for a capacity of 1,500 inmates. It currently houses more than double that figure.
Lebanon has also reeled under a crushing financial and economic crisis since 2019 which impacted most sectors.
More than 2,000 Syrian prisoners and detainees are currently being held in Lebanon, constituting about 35 percent of the country’s total number of inmates. Many of them were arrested over alleged links to the war in Syria, such as joining extremist groups, or for criminal offences committed in Lebanon.
Calls for help
Upon announcing their hunger strike, the Syrian detainees sent a message to Al-Sharaa, urging him to “work to free them and transfer them to Syria” and appoint an official from the Syrian government to follow up on their case.
They said many of them were in prison because they chose to stand with the Syrian revolution.
“The Lebanese judiciary is trying hundreds of Syrians over so-called acts of terrorism just because some of them defected from the army of the former Syrian regime, or joined the [opposition] Free Syrian Army, or just for fleeing from Syria to Lebanon to escape death,” the detainee who spoke to Asharq Al-Awsat said.
The detainee stressed that “those arrested for ordinary crimes are also victims of displacement and the conditions of oppression and persecution that led them to commit violations or crimes in Lebanon”.
Throughout the conflict in Syria, which erupted in 2011 after the ousted regime violently repressed democracy protests, Assad had labelled opposition factions and rebels as “terrorists”.
Lebanon witnessed deadly spillovers from the war next door, including border clashes with the Islamic State group and Nusra Front militants and bombings.
The country has also hosted a huge number of Syrian refugees throughout the war. While no exact figures exist, Lebanese authorities say somewhere between 1.5 million and 2 million are still residing in Lebanon – about a third of the total population.
