There are an estimated three thousand Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip held in Israeli detention centers and prisons. The Lebanese prisoners whose situation is described here are among a smaller group of at least 119 security detainees and prisoners who are non-Palestinian Arabs, Palestinians who were residing in neighboring countries, or Iranians. They include fifty-two Lebanese, twenty-two Syrians, twenty-one Jordanians, fifteen Egyptians, seven Iraqis, three Iranians, two Kuwaitis, and one Libyan, according to an incomplete list that Ha'aretz, a leading Israeli daily, said it obtained from the Israel Prison Service in March 1997.1 These do not include the persons held in Khiyam, a detention center in Israeli-occupied south Lebanon run by the SLA.
These detainees were taken into Israeli custody in various circumstances. Most were captured in Lebanese territory or in Lebanese territorial waters. Detainees were captured in the course of military operations against the IDF or the SLA, taken from their homes by Israeli commando units, seized in Lebanese waters by a Lebanese militia and handed over to Israel, stopped and arrested at road blocks manned by the SLA, or taken into custody afterentering Israel illegally from Jordan to seek asylum,2 among others. Persons seized in Lebanon or in its territorial waters include Lebanese citizens as well as nationals of Jordan, Syria and other countries living in Lebanon. Others were captured by the IDF after infiltrating into Israel from neighboring countries such as Jordan and Egypt. In some cases, persons captured in south Lebanon were detained in Khiyam and other detention centers in Israeli-occupied south Lebanon before their transfer to Israel.
The Ha'aretz report that the Israeli Prison Service lists three Iranian prisoners among Israel's non-Palestinian prisoners has given rise to speculation among local human rights groups regarding the fate of four Iranians who "disappeared" in Beirut one month after the June 1982 Israeli invasion, as Israeli authorities have refused either to respond formally to queries concerning them or to make public the list that reportedly identified them.3 The four-Mohssen Mousavi, chargé d'affaires of Iran's embassy in Beirut; Ahmad Motovasselian, a diplomat; Kazem Akhavan, a photographer with the Iranian News Agency; and Mohamad-Taghi Rastegar-Moghadam, a driver-were never seen again after being stopped at a checkpoint on the Beirut-Tripoli highway manned by the Lebanese Forces, the then-powerful military arm of the Maronite Christian Phalange Party that assimilated other Christian militias during Lebanon's civil war. In November 1990, a delegation that visited Beirut on behalf of the families of the four missing Iranians was reportedly told by Lebanese Forces commander Samir Geagea "that his predecessor as leader of the Lebanese Forces, Elie Hobeika, had ordered the four killed within hours of their arrival at the military roadblock," although members of the delegation insisted that the four Iranians were still alive and were being held at a militia prison.4 Although no hard evidence has emerged as to their fate, Israel's resort to secret detention and "disappearance" in some of the cases described in this report make it all the more imperative that Israel disclose the identities of all foreign nationals in its custody.
Israel occupies a strip of territory in south Lebanon, which it controls through the IDF and the SLA. The SLA and the IDF continue to carry out arrests in these areas, and some of the persons thus arrested are taken by the Israeli authorities to Israel. Dozens of persons currently in Israeli jails have been transferred there after arrest in areas under occupation.
Two recent cases illustrate this practice. On June 18, 1996, an IDF spokesperson acknowledged that Ali Diya, a Lebanese Agence France-Presse correspondent, was under interrogation in Israel. Diya was arrested by the SLA after being summoned to their headquarters in Marjayoun on June 13, 1996. The SLA then handed Diya over to Israeli soldiers who took him to Israel. The spokesperson added that Diya "is suspected of aiding the [Lebanese]Shi'ite militia Hizbullah and may be charged with serious crimes." Diya was held for over a month without charge or trial and then released.5 Similarly, in November 1996 Israel acknowledged its early October transfer to Israel of Mansur Husam Azzam, a resident of the village of Fardis in south Lebanon. Azzam had been accused of carrying out attacks against the IDF and SLA in occupied south Lebanon and charged with membership in Hizballah.6
While both have since been released, four other detainees-Bassam al-Hasbani of Qlei'a village, Maher Touma from Sidon, and Salim Salamah and Ramzi Nahara, both from Ibl al-Saqi-arrested in the occupation zone on February 22, 1996, and transferred to Israel on March 17, 1996, remain in custody inside Israel. The Israelis arrested these persons on suspicion of their participation in the capture of Ahmad Hallaq, a Lebanese citizen sentenced to death by a Lebanese court for collaboration with the Israeli occupation authorities and subsequently executed.7
The Israeli procedures for detentions inside Lebanon and transfers to Israel, sometimes constituting forced "disappearance," are to an extent paralleled by the practices of Syrian forces in Lebanon who in their case acted with the acquiescence of Lebanese authorities. The issue of Lebanese citizens and Palestinian refugees "disappeared" by Syrian intelligence forces operating in Lebanon and their Lebanese accomplices, and their unacknowledged transfer to Syria, is addressed in a Human Rights Watch/Middle East report released in May 1997.8
1 Yosef al-Ghazi, "More Than 120 Citizens of Arab States Detained in Israel," Ha'aretz, March 18, 1997. The list obtained by Ha'aretz is not complete, as it excluded Mustafa al-Dirani and Sheikh Abd al-Karim Obeid. Human Rights Watch attempted to obtain a copy of this list directly from the Israeli government but was refused.
2 Thirty Iraqis entered Israeli-controlled territory from Jordan in early 1994 after fleeing Iraq, crossing in small groups into the West Bank and southern Israel. Upon their arrival into Israel, they all surrendered immediately and applied for asylum. While recognized as refugees by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Israel denied all of them asylum, and entered orders of deportation against them. Until now, no country has accepted these persons; in the meantime, Israel has released twenty-four of the detainees and kept six in detention, citing unspecified security reasons. Until a country accepts them, there is no provision in Israeli law which would limit the duration of the detainees' detention. Human Rights Watch/Middle East telephone interview with Moshe Cohen, Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Haifa, April 16, 1997.
3 Human Rights Watch wrote to the Israeli government on April 15, 1997 concerning the prison service list cited in Ha'aretz requesting in particular information on the Iranians reportedly detained. In a separate letter that same day, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) inquired specifically about whether Kazem Akhavan, an Iranian photographer who was among the four "disappeared," was one of the Iranians in detention. Neither Human Rights Watch nor the CPJ has received a response from the Israeli government.
4 See Ihsan Hijazi, "Hostage's Fate Linked to 4 Missing Iranians," New York Times, November 23, 1990. The seizure of the four Iranians has been described by political analysts as having led directly to the Western "hostage crisis" that followed; within a short time, Western journalists, academics, diplomats and others were seized and sometimes executed. See, e.g., Brian Jenkins and Robin Wright, "Why Taking Hostages Is a Winning Terror Tactic," Washington Post, July 12, 1987.
5 See Reporters sans frontières, "Israel: Authorities Arrest Lebanese Journalist Ali Diya," June 19, 1996; Amnesty International, "Urgent Action: Israel/South Lebanon: Ali Diya, aged 44, dentist and journalist," (AI Index: MDE 15/47/96), July 4, 1996. In addition to his employment with AFP, Ali Diya was also a correspondent for Beirut's Al-Safir newspaper and for Beirut-based Future Television, and in the course of his work reported on clashes between Israeli soldiers and Hizballah-affiliated Islamic Resistance guerillas in southern Lebanon. The Committee to Protect Journalists expressed in a letter to the Israeli government its concern that Diya "may have been detained because of his journalistic work." Letter from the Committee to Protect Journalists to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, June 19, 1996.
6 "Israel Reveals Capture and Transfer of Lebanese," Agence France-Presse, November 11, 1996.
7 Human Rights Watch/Middle East telephone interview with Muhammad Safa, Secretary, Follow-Up Committee for the Support of Lebanese Detainees in Israeli Prisons, Beirut, January 30, 1997; see also Anonymous v. State of Israel (Israel High Court, July 7, 1996) ("From information which was presented to the minister [of defence] and before the court, it arises that the four appellants took part, each in his own way, in the kidnaping of a Lebanese citizen.").
Hallaq was suspected of having exploded a car bomb in Sfeir district in southern Beirut on December 21, 1994 on behalf of the Mossad, Israel's external intelligence agency. Three persons died in the blast, including Hallaq's intended target, Fuad Moughniyyeh, a local Hizballah security official and the brother of Imad Moughniyyeh, the alleged planner of many kidnapings of Westerners in Beirut in the 1980s. A Lebanese court tried Hallaq in absentia in April 1995 and sentenced him to death in June of that year. The four presently in Israeli custody are believed by the Israeli government to have seized Hallaq in the occupation zone in February 1996 and to have handed him over to Lebanese army intelligence. A Lebanese court retried him in May of 1996 and sentenced him to death for the second time in June 1996 (under Lebanese law, a person sentenced in absentia has the right to retrial). President Elias Hrawi refused an amnesty appeal in July 1996, and Hallaq was executed on September 24, 1996. "Lebanon: Lebanese Mossad Agent Executed by Firing Squad," Reuter, September 21, 1996; "Lebanon: Beirut Blast Suspect Said to be Israeli Agent," Reuter, December 28, 1994.
8 Human Rights Watch/Middle East, "Syria/Lebanon: An Alliance Beyond the Law: Enforced Disappearances in Lebanon," A Human Rights Watch Short Report, vol. 9, no. 6, May 1997.