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.