RIGHTS-LEBANON: Abolition Linked to Political Stability

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Rebecca Murray

TYRE, Lebanon, Nov 14 2007 (IPS) - Sonele Daas sits on death row in Lebanon’s central Roumieh prison, found guilty of murder almost one decade ago. The 60-year-old Bangladeshi had travelled to Lebanon to work and send wages home to his family. However, after a dispute with a fellow compatriot, Daas was arrested, tried and convicted by a Lebanese court for his friend’s subsequent death.

Today Daas still does not understand Arabic, has lost touch with his family and is entirely dependent on others for help, explains Jihane Morad, a young social worker for the Association for Justice and Mercy (AJEM), a grassroots organization with a daily presence in the prison offering social services and legal aid. “He doesn’t know who his lawyer was” she says, “so we have agreed to review his case.”

Daas is one of 40 men in crowded Roumieh prison currently sentenced to die by shooting or hanging. Since Lebanon’s independence in 1943, 54 people have been executed by the state, many after the civil war’s end in the 1990s.

During an enormous national anti-death penalty campaign backed by over 50 civil society organizations a few years ago, a poll conducted by the leading ban activist, Walid Slaybi, determined that 74 percent of Lebanese parliamentarians were in favour of abolition.

The next step, recalls Slaybi, was to present a draft law on abolition, already signed by a number of deputies, to prime minister Sinoira on July 12, 2006. However, that day the Israel-Lebanon conflict broke out. “Now with the political crises today, the parliament does not meet. Under these conditions we cannot present it – but it is ready,” says Slaybi.

Lebanon’s last series of executions have been high profile and especially controversial, enacted in the wake of national public outrage over the crimes.

In 1998 there was a public hanging in Tabarja town square of two thieves, Hassan Abu Jabal and Wissam Issa, who had killed the owners of a house they had broken into. Hundreds of people and television cameras watched at dawn as the gallows briefly malfunctioned and the lifeless bodies were then left on display for over an hour. “This was a big trauma for the children of the village,” recalls Marie Daunay, president of the Lebanese Centre for Human Rights (CLDH). “It was horrible – the kids were playing at hanging each other afterwards at school.”

The executions coincided with the first known public protest in Lebanon against the death penalty, says Slaybi, when he, Ogarit Younan, a lawyer, and around 30 others staged a sit-in that morning in the town square.

After a brief halt of executions under prime minister Salim Hoss, who virulently opposed the death penalty, the murder of eight, mostly Christian co-workers by a Shiite man, Ahmad Mansour, sparked widespread sectarian anger in 2004. Careful to appease the various political parties, Mansour was executed by hanging. The state also executed by firing squad Remi Zaatar, a Christian, and Badih Hamade, a Sunni, both on death row for unrelated murders.

Since then there have been no executions. “However those who are condemned are always living in fear that they might be executed,” says Morad. “Many are receiving psychiatric treatment because of this constant fear.”

In 1998 Nehmeh al Haj, a 44-year-old from the Beirut area was arrested by Syrian intelligence agents and taken to Anjar, near the Syrian border. He says he was interrogated with torture for up to a month, denied a lawyer and forced to sign a confession that he murdered two Syrian labourers in Lebanon. He was then turned over to Lebanon and transferred to Roumieh prison. His trial, six years later, was based on his signed confession in Anjar, and despite his allegations of torture, he received the death penalty.

Al Haj’s case is presently adopted by CLDH and has been reported to the United Nation’s Human Rights Council. “If you study the cases of people sentenced to death [in Lebanon],” explains Daunay, “with most of them you will find big contradictions with international law. Their rights during the trial were not respected. So if you don’t respect the rights of the accused, you cannot be sure that the decision is right.”

Human rights advocates complain Lebanon’s court trials are often expedient, the accused lacks adequate counsel (defence lawyers for death penalty cases are scarce and they usually work for without payment), the appeals process is limited and torture to obtain a confession is commonplace.

Lebanon is a signatory to international laws governing civil and political rights, and against torture. “Lebanon as a state signs everything, but nothing is implemented,” says Daunay.

Death penalty abolitionists were hoping Lebanon would repeal the death penalty in accordance with international laws currently governing the U.N. special tribunal set up to try the suspects in the killing of prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005.

However, the UN and the Lebanon reached an understanding that the tribunal, which has power to impose penalties leading up to life imprisonment, would have precedence over Lebanese national law where the death penalty would still be valid.

(Rwanda recently abolished the death penalty, making it easier for it to apply for the extradition of genocide suspects hiding abroad.)

With widespread public outrage over the Lebanese Army casualties in Nahr el Bared refugee camp at the hands of Fatah al Islam last summer, in addition to the current political crises, passage of a death penalty the ban now seems somewhat remote.

However, with the abolitionist campaigners having succeeded in getting accidental death struck off the list of charges to merit the death penalty, Slaybi believes the campaign will ultimately triumph. “If there is stability in Lebanon – then the death penalty will be eliminated,” he says with conviction.