Human Rights Watch calls on Lebanon to investigate the torture of an artist during his arrest on trumped-up charges



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Human Rights Watch today called on the Lebanese authorities to investigate Ziad Itani's statement that he was allegedly tortured in the security services after being arrested on trumped-up charges for "communication". with Israel.

The state security apparatus in Lebanon last November, the theater actor and director Itani, was arrested after being suspected of "communication, communication and trafficking" with Israel . He remained in detention for several months before being acquitted by the judiciary, he was released on March 13 by a decision of the military judge and the charges against him, which were made by a Lebanese policeman, to be avenged personally. "Itani was detained in an unofficial center where he was beaten by men in plain clothes, tied painfully, hanged on his wrist, beaten in the face, threatened to rape him and threatened to physically injure his family," Itani told Human. Rights Watch.

Itani said, "I saw no doctor, my body was blue, I was spitting blood, and I could not speak clearly."

After his release, the Lebanese judiciary ordered at the end of May a high-ranking officer to "fabricate" communication with Israel from the theater actor. "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 Lema Fakih, deputy director of the Middle East Division of Human Rights Watch. And the authorities must ensure that this is not repeated. "

In his testimony to Human Rights Watch, Itani testified that he was taken to a" torture room completely covered in black and clinging to metal hooks. "A security guard told him," You must understand " said.

One of the men, said Itani, took off his pants and hit him on the bads, then the men hung his wrists at a bar between the sides of the door so that he would touch barely his feet and leaves him 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 confession

In his statement, Faqih considered that "torture is not only illegal but also ineffective because it leads to false confessions."

Officially, Lebanese law criminalizes torture, but Human Rights Watch said that she had briefed have been "credible allegations of torture in Lebanon" for years, but the authorities have not investigated them properly and "torture is still held accountable".

Ziad Itani is a Lebanese actor who became famous in recent years as part of a play that deals specifically with the history of the city of Beirut and its customs and changes over the last few decades.

Source: AB

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