Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Torture in Lebanon

"Indeed, there are plenty of things to be astounded at on the Lebanese prison scene, but being called out for torture isn’t one of them.

Of the three people I personally know who have had the misfortune to wind up on the receiving end of Lebanese “justice,” all three were either direct recipients of or audio-visual witnesses to physical abuse.

One acquaintance, detained for three days by the ISF in an overcrowded cell in which one cellmate had already spent 89 days without charge, recounted to me the especially brutal treatment meted out to a poor Egyptian detainee. It seems the man’s dismal socioeconomic status and maligned national identity provided additional inspiration to his power-tripping interrogators, who whipped him with cables and subjected him to a torture method nicknamed after rotisserie chicken."