Forgotten victims of Lebanon war seek justice

Israel and the Middle East:
special report

Julie Flint, Beirut
The Observer, Sunday February 20, 2000

The photograph shows a fresh-faced boy with longish hair and
jeans too close-fitting for the liking of the pro-Iranian
group he is accused of supporting. He sits on a sofa patterned
in roses and smiles into the camera, out of school for the day
and glad of it. Sixteen-years-old, and not a care in the world.

The date is 1 September, 1986. The place, Mays al-Jabal in
Israeli-occupied south Lebanon. Before the day is out,
Israeli-backed militiamen will burst in and take him away for
thirteen-and-a- half years - 13 of them in jails across the
international border, where a newly released report by Israel's
state comptroller acknowledges that security officials often
ex-ceeded the 'moderate physical pressure' permitted.

Terry Anderson, the American journalist held hostage for six
and half years, last week demanded $100 million in damages
from the Iranian government he blames for his kidnapping in
1985. By the same token, Kamal Rizq says, he should be seeking
rather more than $150m from Israel - with a bonus, perhaps, for
the torture he suffered.

Rizq, now 30 years old and free at last, was every bit as much
a hostage as the Westerners who went missing in Lebanon. After
serving out a three-year sentence for supporting the Lebanese
resistance - support he says was only ever moral - he was held
in near-total isolation for a further 10 years in the hope that
he could be traded for Israelis missing in action in Lebanon.
A 'bargaining chip' in pursuit of a 'vital interest of state',
in the words of the 1997 Supreme Court ruling that gave
after-the-fact justification to his detention. In plain English,
a hostage.

But while the Western hostages - Anderson, John McCarthy and
Terry Waite - are household names, those of Israel's Lebanese
hostages are unknown - even though there are 16 of them at
present and they have been held longer, and at times more
brutally, than any Westerner.

The state comptroller's report, written in 1995 but kept secret
until this month, refers only to the torture of Palestinians
in Israel. The testimony of Rizq and other Lebanese released
in recent weeks - both from Israel proper and from Khiam prison
in Israeli-occupied south Lebanon - make clear that torture
was not limited to the period of the intifada.

Like Ali Taube, who was only 14 when he was tortured with
electricity, Kamal Rizq's most fearful days came in Khiam,
his staging post for Israel.

Here, he says, he was hooded, tied to a pole and beaten for
days on end, deprived of sleep and kept in the cold. For
the first 15 days he was locked in solitary confinement
in a room one meter square.

Fellow prisoners had electricity shot through their fingertips
and genitals.

Dr Jamal Hafez, a French-trained psychotherapist who has treated
scores of former Khiam inmates, says approximately 80 per cent
suffer from 'prison trauma' - four or five times the norm. 'Khiam
is a place where they try to destroy you psychologically,'
he says. 'It is intended to break the human spirit.'

Although Khiam is ostensibly under the control of Israel's
client militia, the South Lebanon Army, inmates say they
have glimpsed Israeli officers there, Israeli helicopters
fly overhead when there is unrest and uniforms bear Hebrew
labels. It's a place, Rizq says, 'where the SLA does the
dirty work and Israel has deniability'.

Rizq says he was not tortured in Israel - 'unless you count
13 years of unwarranted imprisonment'. But for many Lebanese
who have gone straight to Israel without passing Khiam, where
139 men and women are still detained, Israel is a place of
terrible memory.

Kassem Qammas, a member of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah party
who was captured in 1987 and released last month, was
repeatedly beaten on a wounded leg and has the scars to
prove it. He says he was starved, submitted to extreme
temperatures and strapped to a small chair for up to three
days, his arms and legs bound behind him.
Sometimes an unseen hand rocked the chair so violently that
he lost consciousness. They called it 'the ghost'.

A German initiative to locate Ron Arad, an Israeli pilot
shot down on a bombing raid in October 1986, has so far
won the release of five Lebanese hostages and is probably
the best hope for the remaining 16. Israel's High Court
was expected to publish a ruling banning hostage-taking
last December. But the ruling has still not been made
public and no explanation has been given.

The hostages' families have no doubts about the reason for
the delay: Germany's mediation with Hezbollah - and the
new usefulness of 'chips'. They are not surprised that no
one is asking for an explanation. Their sons have always
been, in the words of Amnesty International, Israel's
'forgotten hostages'.