A man closely linked with the group Fatah al-Islam has been recaptured by Lebanese authorities after a day on the run.
According to the Associated Press, “Eight members of an Islamic militant group sawed bars off their cell windows in a high-security Lebanese prison on Tuesday, scaled down the building using blankets tied together, then stood on each other’s shoulders to help one jump over a wall, security officials said. Guards prevented seven of the prisoners from fleeing, but one escaped, the officials said.”
The one man who managed to escape was identified as Taha al-Hajj Suleiman, who claims both Syrian and Palestinian nationality.
Soon after the escape, the arrests of a number of guards were ordered by Interior Minister Ziad Baroud for their alleged participation in the plot. The problem of guard involvement, however, appears to be more widespread than initially reported.
According to the APF, “[Baroud] also ordered the internal security forces (ISF) to sack 60 of its officers from jobs at the country’s 21 prisons and to move them to unrelated duties outside the prison system within 15 days. Another 300 ISF members would be relocated to posts outside prisons within two months.”
Such drastic and far-reaching moves coming just one day after the attempted breakout seems to indicate that officials were aware of a larger problem within the nation’s prison system prior to this incident.
Perhaps the combination of the escape attempt and apparent guard involvement in it will create some public pressure in Lebanon to reform its prison system.
According to Al-Jazeera, Roumieh prison, the scene of the escape attempt, “was built four decades ago to house 1,000 prisoners but today holds more than 3,000. ” Baroud himself has called the prison system “under-staffed and under-equipped”.
The issue has been referred to the nation’s judiciary for investigation.
The group that the escapees belonged to, Fatah al-Islam, fought a deadly battle with Lebanese Armed Forces in 2007 that claimed the lives of over 400 people. Nahr al-Bared, the Palestinian refugee camp where the battle took place, was completely leveled in the fighting.
Just last week, new security structures were erected outside another refugee camp in the region. According to a Daily Star source, ““There is a decision by the Lebanese Army to tighten the grip on the security situation in the north and crack down on terrorist cells there.”
The Syrian-backed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP-GC) operates in the camp and indicated that the camp’s inhabitants were fearful that the army was planning a similar assault (on their camp) to the one in 2007 at Nahr al-Bared.
Making up about ten percent of the population, over 400,000 Palestinian refugees live in Lebanon.
