Lebanese authorities have arrested 5 State Security agents on suspicion of torturing a Syrian detainee to death, in the latest abuse allegation against the security services, a judicial source told AFP.
The young Syrian “died within three hours of his arrest after being subjected to severe torture and beatings that triggered a heart attack,” the source said, adding that the detainee was pronounced dead on arrival in the hospital.
The State Security agents arrested Bashar Abdel Saud on August 31 and took him to an agency facility in Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon for questioning with other detainees.
The agents wanted to “obtain a confession from the deceased suspect that he was the leader of a cell” linked to the Islamic State group (IS) but he “persisted in denying the allegation,” according to the source.
On September 19, 2017, the Lebanese Parliament passed national law No. 65/2017 criminalizing torture, and in July 2019, the government appointed five members of the National Preventative Mechanism against Torture (NPM).
In March last year, human rights group Amnesty International published a report detailing the alleged use of torture against 26 Syrian refugees “arbitrarily detained on counter-terror charges.”
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