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Efforts to free journalist stepped up
Daily Star,  Beirut
Sep 28 1999

Efforts continue to secure the release of journalist Cosette Ibrahim, who was imprisoned at the Khiam detention center two weeks ago, and an Israeli peace activist is planning a protest Monday to demand Khiam’s closure and the release of Lebanese detainees.
Yona Rochlin, who is also a member of the "Red Line" group which is demanding an Israeli withdraw from the south, is organizing a protest in front of Israel’s Justice Ministry.
Rochlin said it was irrelevant that Ibrahim was accused by Israelis of writing reports about the south and transferring information to Hizbullah and the Lebanese Army because the journalist had been detained without trial.
In an e-mail to the Follow-Up Committee for the Support of Lebanese Detainees in Israeli Prisons, which distributed the text to the press, Rochlin described Khiam as “the most demonic facility operated by the Israeli government.”
She criticized the Israeli government for withholding information about Khiam and also blamed the press for not informing the Israeli public of what happens to detainees in the detention center in the occupation zone. “Every year, hundreds of Lebanese citizens are detained in this prison, under administrative arrest and without trial, and with no legal supervision. For years, it has been strictly closed to the press. Ex-detainees have reported torture using barbaric methods, including electric shock,” Rochlin said.
“We don’t know about Khiam because they don’t want us to know. It is our civil duty to demand to know what our army is doing in our name,” she said.
Rochlin said she was protesting “against the fact that we don’t know. We will meet with people who do know and get the information that we are denied concerning Khiam.”
“We will demand the end of dark, illegal activities that require a code of silence, which is more than a decade old,” she said.