by Fady Noun

Talks to trade Islamist detainees for 30 captured soldiers and police officers are evidence of how the authorities are unable to elaborate a clear strategy to free the hostages, powerless vis-à-vis the execution of soldiers. This failure underscores the country's sectarian divisions in which each group tries to free its own hostages. It also shows how the legal state has failed to enforce its authority militarily, especially since its military forces lack the necessary equipment and intelligence to mount operations against jihadist strongholds.

Beirut (AsiaNews) - The main news story in Lebanon for 2014 has not been the failure to elect a president since May but the defensive war waged by the Lebanese military against terrorist Sunni fundamentalism.

Initially confined to predominantly Shia areas, especially in the southern suburbs of Beirut but by several car bomb attacks, including one against the Iranian Embassy, this terrorism moved against the Lebanese military, eventually turning northward to Tripoli and eastward to the Syrian borders.

One of its goals is to create a corridor to the Mediterranean for the inland regions that it now controls in Syria and Iraq. Hence, what is happening right now in Lebanon is indisputably part of wider regional developments.

Still, despite being poorly equipped, the Lebanese army has shown courage and cohesion in the fight against terrorism. Fully backed by the Future Movement, the dominant moderate force in Lebanon's Sunni community, the army foiled the plans of Islamist groups that had become embedded in Tripoli, by driving them out of the city, not without heavy losses. Even the defection of a handful of fanaticised soldiers merely underscored this cohesion. Yet, in Tripoli as in other parts of northern Lebanon, individual soldiers and troop convoys continue to be harassed and attacked.

Islamists held in Roumieh's central prison, who were arrested after the fall of Nahr el-Bared and Fatah al-Islam's defeat 2008, are part of the shadowy world of terrorism directed against Lebanon's institutional and cultural foundations.

After the fall of Nahr el-Bared, charges were laid against 420 people, almost half in absentia. Initially, prosecution was handed over to military courts; eventually, the case was turned over to the Court of Justice. This came on top of two other cases involving previous terrorist attacks involving Fatah al-Islam (Bohssass and Ain Alak).

All defendants in the Nahr el-Bared case were jailed pending trial in 2008. However, the first sentences were handed down in 2013. For those convicted, the time in pre-trial detention was simply part of the longer prison sentences imposed on them for their involvement in the Battle of Nahr el-Bared, which had left 172 Lebanese soldiers dead, with countless more wounded or permanently maimed and disabled. By contrast, for several dozen of defendants, the time spent in prison before trial was a serious breach of justice. Still, that page has been turned.

Procedural Matters

The large number of cases involving Islamists partly explains the duration of pre-trial detention at Roumieh. One factor causing delays was related to court procedures. Since inmates and their lawyers are required to enter a plea, a tedious routine that can take up to two hours, individual cases were grouped together. Another factor was related to security concerns generated by the need to shuttle dozens of prisoners to and from the Roumieh Courthouse. In view of that, a special courtroom was built near the prison itself.

At present, out 93 Islamists jailed in Roumieh, 35 are still waiting to stand trial. However, since the battle of Ersal on 2 August 2014, on Lebanon's eastern border, the situation has changed. Islamists now refuse to appear before the court (which meets every Friday). Urged by the latter, the prison, which comes under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior, acknowledged that it is unable to bring the defendants into the courtroom "without some bloodshed . . ."

At the same, after six years in prison, Islamist prisoners have been able to organise themselves, turning Roumieh's B Block into an autonomous zone, a no-go zone under Islamist law where guards fear attacks or becoming a hostage. Inmates have organised their collective life following a hierarchy of their own, with access to mobile phones and other means of comfort, and where they meet out their own kind of justice. In fact, they have been blamed for the execution of an inmate who refused to submit to their rule.

Media anarchy

As a sign of the anarchy that reigns in Lebanon, Lebanese broadcast media managed to interview inmates by phone during live TV news broadcast. Had anyone else done that in anywhere else Lebanon, they would have been charged at least with complicity and contempt of court.

Inspired by their ideology, inmates in Roumieh behave like prisoners of war. Some have even managed to escape, whilst others tried without success. Such incidents have cast a harsh light on the country's prison system as well as on the corruption and the incompetence that allow such serious breaches to occur. Some prison staff, including medical staff, have been arrested or fired as a result of the escapes.

Since 2 August, and the attack against the army at Ersal, where jihadist leader Imad Jomaa was unexpectedly and unintentionally captured, Islamist inmates in Roumieh have played an ever larger role in another, similarly tragic situation, namely the possible exchange of jihadist prisoners for about 30 Lebanese hostages, soldiers and police officers, captured during the Battle of Ersal by two groups active in Syria's Qalamoun region, i.e. the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nosra Front, and the infamous Islamic State militant group.

A national tragedy

Since August, the prisoners in Roumieh have been at the heart of a national tragedy, which has forced Lebanon to look at itself through its own media. Those running the country have proven incapable of establishing a clear negotiating strategy vis-à-vis jihadist groups, and have bitterly watched the execution of Lebanese soldiers, two of them beheaded. In a country divided along sectarian lines, each group has sought to free its own hostage. The legal authorities have also been incapable of operating like a militia, setting up gallows at the gate of Roumieh prison. Underequipped and without proper intelligence gathering, the Lebanese military has been unable to carry out targeted operations against jihadist strongholds.

On the issue of exchanging hostages for prisoners, the military has lived up to its reputation, which is one of silence. For the army, it is none of its business. All it is willing to say is that it strongly refuses to "having a knife at its throat." From a strategic point of, for the military, "there are no hostages".

Even at the Justice Ministry, no one is talking. "Our job is to state the law. If you want to release some prisoners, that is your business. Pass an amnesty law!" This is what the legislative and the executive branches are told.

Whatever the case may be, what is clear is that both the justice system and the military are under attack on several fronts.  Lebanon is in a dynamic defensive war, even though this situation is not clearly explained in the eyes of public authority. Under such a situation, one may justify holding people in conditions not governed by ordinary law.

This is situation in which the Lebanese state is manipulated by neo-barbarians whose media are unwitting accomplices in a venal obsession for ratings. This has created an image of the state as an involuntary executioner and even clumsier victim, decidedly one of the most ambiguous and most unjust shows that it has given of itself this year.

• lebanon
• political
• crisis
• syrian
• civil
• war