Itani told Human Rights Watch: I was tortured during my arrest

Human Rights Watch today called on the Lebanese authorities to investigate the allegations of the theater actor Ziad Itani regarding torture when he was arrested last year by the security services for to have "dealt" with Israel before his acquittal.

The state security apparatus was suspended in November after being suspected of "mediation, communication and negotiation" with Israel. He remained in detention for several months before being released on 13 March by a decision of the military judge after his acquittal and the charges against him were dropped. "He was beaten by men in civilian clothes, tied up in painful positions, hanged on his wrists, beaten in the face, threatened to rape him and threatened to physically hurt his family," Itani told Human Rights Watch.

Itani said, "I saw no doctor, my body was blue and I was spitting blood … I could not speak clearly."
"The allegations of torture and enforced disappearance of Itani require a thorough investigation into his treatment during detention and the reasons for his arrest," said the deputy director of the Middle East Division of the organization, My Fakih. Do not repeat it. "

In a testimony to Human Rights Watch, Itani testified that he was taken to a "completely blackened torture room clinging to metal walls." A security officer told him, "You must understand Country". One of the men, he says, took off his pants and hit him at the bads, then the men hung his wrists on a rod between the sides of the door so that he barely touched his feet and have left it for hours. Itani was forced to sign the torture, according to his testimony, and after someone threatened to "insert a penis into his bad" to sign a confessional statement.

In his statement, Faqih felt that "torture is not only illegal but also ineffective because it can lead to false confessions".
Lebanese law criminalizes torture, but Human Rights Watch has stated that it has documented "credible allegations of torture in Lebanon" for years, but that the authorities have not investigated it properly and that "the Torture is still held responsible in detention ". (AFP)