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Lebanese-American to be prosecuted for dealing with Israel
[IsraelTimes] Amer Fakhoury said to have worked in a prison run by the Israel-backed South Leb Army before the IDF withdrawal in 2000.Leb said Friday that a Lebanese-American has been referred to prosecutors after confessing he’d worked for Israel. Amer Fakhoury was detained after returning to his native Leb from the United States earlier this month. He had worked as warden at the Khiam Prison in southern Leb that was run by an Israeli-backed militia, known as the South Leb Army, until Israel ended an 18-year occupation of the area in 2000. Leb and Israel have been officially at war since Israel’s creation in 1948. The Lebanese General Security Directorate said Friday Fakhoury used an Israeli passport before Israel’s withdrawal to travel from Israel to the US Hundreds of former Lebanese members of the militia had fled to Israel, fearing reprisal if they remained in Leb. Others stayed and faced trial, receiving lenient sentences.
Lebanon's military court had ordered the arrest of Amer al-Fakhoury, a former member of the pro-Israel South Lebanon Army (SLA) militia and a senior warden in the notorious SLA-run Khiyam prison, the source said. The country's General Security agency has been interrogating Fakhoury since Wednesday, the source added. Another security source said the former SLA member had fled to the United States and had already been charged in absentia to 15 years in prison for collaborating with Israel. Opened in 1984 in an Israeli-occupied part of southern Lebanon, the Khiyam prison was run by the Christian-dominated SLA. Former inmates accuse Fakhoury of ordering the torture of thousands of detainees held there before Israeli forces withdrew from the area in 2000, ending their 22-year occupation of south Lebanon. The former inmates joined nearly a hundred demonstrators on Thursday outside the Ministry of Justice in Beirut, where they condemned Fakhoury's return to Lebanon, calling him a "butcher." It was not immediately clear when Fakhoury entered the country, but the Lebanese Al-Akhbar daily said Thursday that he arrived in Beirut's airport "days ago". The newspaper claimed that all charges against Fakhoury had been "withdrawn", allowing him to leave the airport without being arrested. Fakhoury left Lebanon in 1998, two years before the Israeli withdrawal. Amnesty International and other human rights groups have often accused the SLA of torturing its prisoners. Thousands of former SLA members have been tried in Lebanese military court for collaboration, and the powerful Shiite Hezbollah movement has complained that sentences given to those convicted have been too light. Many of the Khiyam personnel escaped to Europe or North America when Israel withdrew its forces from south Lebanon in 2000. Thousands of SLA members and their families also fled to Israel for fear of reprisals by Hezbollah or of criminal charges. Many have since returned to Lebanon. Posted by: trailing wife 2019-09-14 |
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