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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 June 2000 Issue No. 484 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 1 - 7 June 2000 Issue No. 484
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Features Heritage Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Memorial to atrocity
By Ranwa YehiaBy giving horrified visitors tours of the Khiam detention centre, one-time detainee Ali Khsheish, willingly relived the 11 years of incarceration at the facility which continue to affect his life.
Walking briskly through the dark, narrow and humid corridors leading to rows upon rows of cells which only last week held 144 Lebanese detainees, Khsheish recounted the ordeal of being admitted to the notorious detention centre.
"This is where they brought me for interrogation and torture on my first day," Khsheish said, pointing to the main interrogation room ransacked by villagers who broke into the centre and courageously released the detainees on 23 May.
"They" are the pro-Israel South Lebanon Army (SLA) militiamen who manned the centre from its establishment in 1985. Although Israel repeatedly denied responsibility for the detention centre, it admitted to training the SLA members holding the centre and to providing them with a regular supply of money and arms. The SLA is believed to have acted mainly on the basis of orders from the Israeli army.
The detention centre, which takes its name from the recently-liberated village where it is located, was established by the Israeli army in 1985 to replace the Ansar detention camp, also in south Lebanon, from which Israel withdrew during that same year.
Like all those who experienced the horrors of being detained in Khiam, Khsheish said he endured torture "beyond imagination." "During interrogation, the SLA forced me to bite on an electric cord, and every time I gave an answer they did not like, they yanked the cord forward," he said. That was not all. After enduring two months of daily interrogations, during which a cloth bag was placed on his head and his hands and feet were tightly chained, Khsheish was introduced to the other forms of torture.
Khsheish described the other forms of torture he suffered, most of which were publicised numerous times in reports by human rights organisations, including Amnesty International.
Detainees at Khiam were subjected to electric shocks on their fingers, toes, tongues, ears and genitals. Chained to an electric pole with their feet barely touching the floor, the detainees endured extremely cold and hot water thrown on them in quick succession. Nails and hair were sometimes pulled out with pliers.
Khsheish's crime? "Supporting the resistance." He did not flinch once as he recounted the horrendous forms of torture to which he was subjected. It was only when he described how the SLA brought his father into Khiam and tortured the 60-year-old man in front of his son that intense pain showed in the former detainee's eyes. "Enduring torture by people I hate is tolerable compared to seeing a person I love suffer because of me," he said.
Despite the suffering he went through, Khsheish is proud to be back in Khiam a free man four years after his release. Now, he is eager that the prison be preserved so that people learn about the atrocities committed against the Lebanese by the occupying forces and their collaborators.
Since the SLA fled from the centre after villagers stormed it on 23 May, tens of thousands of people have visited this tool of the former occupying forces.
People looked in horror at the tiny 2-by-1.5 metre cells where detainees were held in solitary confinement "for bad behaviour."
For the SLA, bad behaviour had a broad definition. Praying or reading the Qur'an, going on hunger strikes in protest of mistreatment and asking for better food and medical treatment were among the actions for which detainees were punished.
Throughout the 15 years of the centre's existence, 2,000 Lebanese citizens, including 500 women and girls were detained there.
The SLA kept the female detainees in a small separate section of the centre. It was here that Cosette Ibrahim, a 25-year-old Lebanese University journalism graduate, spent nine months before being freed along with the 143 others on 23 May.
During a visit to the Khiam detention centre the following day, Al-Ahram Weekly's correspondent inspected the cell in which Ibrahim was detained.
Open books, including Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, The Teachings of Sayed Mohamed Hussein Fadlallah and a collection of plays by Syrian author Saadallah Wannous, lay strewn about on a mussed up bed. Fadlallah was the late leader of Hizbullah.
Two drawings signed by Ibrahim were stuck on the wall behind her bed. One drawing showed a half-naked woman pounding the traditional Lebanese dish of raw kibbeh (beef with bulghur wheat). Written above it was the phrase: "We were that free." The second drawing showed a kneeling woman staring at the sky. A phrase in French read: "It is so much easier to dream my life than to live it."
Speaking to the Weekly in an interview three days following her release, Ibrahim said the drawings reflected her state of mind during detention. "The woman pounding kibbeh represents Eve making food. I wanted to show how we were born with the freedom to do what we want but are stripped of this blessing because of our wrongdoings or those of others," Ibrahim said.
Although Ibrahim said she was not sexually abused during her detention, she asserted that other women were raped on a daily basis. Ibrahim believes she was treated "better" than other detainees because of the local and regional publicity her detention received from the media. This, however, did not deter her from recounting the rape of other women.
The young woman, whose hands shook throughout the two-hour interview, said she feels as though she lived her entire life during the nine months she was detained. "Nothing I experienced before that means anything, nothing at all. My life is the nine months I spent in detention," she said.
