How Do 40 Prisoners Sleep in a Jail Cell Meant For 10?

By Marilyn Raschka

"How do 40 prisoners sleep in a jail cell meant for 10?"

"They take turns."

Justice is no joke and, in fact, this question and answer were part of a serious dialogue between Lebanese Minister of Justice Bahij Tabbara and officials who conducted him on a January tour of Lebanese courts and prisons. Lebanon's years of conflicts and chaos have done their share of damage to both. A 15-year slowdown is how one judge interviewed for this article portrayed the decade and a half of war.

The country's judicial system is faced with thousands of backed-up court cases—all to be heard by 300 judges. Seventy judges have been appointed in the last two years—among them some 40 women—but 370 is a long way from the pre-war figure of 530.

A Shortage of Judges

Where did all the judges go? Some died, some emigrated, others retired. During the war the Ministry of Justice Institute that trains judges operated with frequent interruptions, its location being smack on the former front line.

The conditions Tabbara witnessed during his January tour therefore focused badly needed attention on the subject of crime and punishment. The press, using Tabbara's visit to examine the general justice situation, aired complaints both of human rights violations and of specific allegations of alleged bad treatment of convicts.

To be sure, even before the civil war no one ever mistook Lebanon's jails for Club Fed on the Med. Then came the war years in which few jails had "guests." The contending militia groups had sprung not only their own boys, but the general prison population as well.

However, thanks to "normalization," the minister got an eyeful and a nose full when he visited a large prison in the Beirut suburb of Baabda. The stench from the prisoners themselves permeated the place. The prisoners rarely get to shower due to a water shortage. The minister himself prescribed "holding your nose when entering the prisons," and admitted that "more than once I hesitated before giving permission to foreigners wishing to visit prisons."

The visits also revealed that Lebanon has no reform school facilities for younger transgressors. Juvenile offenders are thrown in with the older ones; sexual abuse is rampant behind these closed doors.

Although Tabbara expressed the need for better and more facilities, the state, with virtually every aspect of life in need of rehabilitation, has little money and less motivation to spend it on bettering the lives of those who have made others suffer.

The Case Against Geagea

The whole issue of rebuilding the shattered justice system on a legacy of civil war has been underscored by the criminal court case against 42-year-old ex-militia leader Samir Geagea.

Geagea, once a promising pre-med student at the American University of Beirut, served as commander of the Christian "Lebanese Forces" (LF) militia until his arrest in April 1994. Shortly thereafter,the LF was declared illegal by government decree.

Now Geagea is charged with ordering the Oct. 1990 murder of Christian rival Dany Chamoun and his German wife and two young sons, as well as the February 1994 bombing of a crowded church in which 10 people died. Prosecutors are expected to charge that Geagea carried out the church bombing on Israeli instructions shortly after 29 Palestinian men and boys were killed in an attack by an Israeli settler on the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron. The alleged Israeli motive for the church massacre was to let suspicion fall on Muslims and set off renewed fighting in Lebanon between Christians and Palestinians.

Since April, Geagea has been held in the military prison at the Ministry of Defense. Geagea's lawyers—all 115 of them—along with some judges, argue that this venue is illegal because Geagea is not a military detainee.

The state, in turn, contends that sufficient security cannot be guaranteed at a civilian jail. The real reason, according to sources interviewed for this article, is that vengeful political leaders want Geagea held under circumstances that make even a Lebanese jail desirable by comparison.

Geagea's military jailers haven't forgotten the Lebanese Army soldiers who died at the hands of the LF in 1990, in the last major battles of the Lebanese conflict. Then the Geagea-led LF battled Gen. Michel Aoun, now exiled in France, and his army regulars.

Now Geagea reportedly is kept in an unlit room, blindfolded and in solitary confinement several stories underground. Again according to a source, only after the intercession of an influential Maronite clergyman was he given a mattress to sleep on.

And, according to one source, when soldiers guarding Geagea escort him outside his cell, "They kick him and rough him up."

In January when Geagea's lawyers walked off the case over the issue, the court appointed a new team of legal advisers. Within weeks they, too, quit—arguing that the 7,000 pages of legal text they had to plough through would take them more time than the court had allotted.

In late January the issue of venue was settled à la Libanaise with the decision to reclassify the prison at the Ministry of Defense as a civilian jail.

"What is built on falsehood is false," one of the three appointed lawyers lashed out as he walked off the case.

Methods of gathering evidence for Geagea's prosecution—which could result in a death sentence—also are questionable.

Methods of gathering evidence also are questionable.

A young ex-LF fighter, interviewed in secret, told of the arrival of Lebanese security forces at his home: "They asked me to write my name. As I leaned over the paper, the men blindfolded me and hauled me off to the Ministry of Defense jail.

"I was held in a one-meter by one-meter jail, hands tied, eyes covered. I was beaten. We were fed sandwiches of rice. The bread was old. We were allowed one visit each day to the bathroom. If that time wasn't long enough the guards would yell, 'Not our problem."'

The question of just whose problem the administration of justice in Lebanon is has been brought into the open by the Geagea trial.

For his part, Tabbara is confident that conditions will improve. He maintains that in just two years of stable government much has been achieved by the Ministry of Justice. He admits, however, that the road ahead "is still long."

Few of Lebanon's governmental institutions have retained as much popular respect and trust as its courts. Although they can justifiably be proud of this record, the judges now must attend not only to trying alleged criminals, but also to the before—investigation and detention—and to the after—the conditions under which the guilty pay for their crimes.

Marilyn Raschka is a free-lance writer who lives in Beirut.