Police Chief Describes as 'Hoax' Footage of Alleged 'Sectarian Attacks' inside Prisons
The commander of the Gendarmerie on Monday described as “a hoax and and a farce” pictures and videos that have surfaced in recent days, in which supposed inmates trade sectarian threats from the prisons of al-Qobbeh, Baalbek and Roumieh.
Earlier, state-run National News Agency reported that the military judiciary has launched a probe into videos of alleged abuse that are being circulated via WhatsApp, noting that State Commissioner to the Military Court Judge Saqr Saqr has received the files of the case.
According to MTV, the thing started at the al-Qobbeh prison in Tripoli, when Sunni inmates threatened Shiite and Alawite prisoners. The supposed response then came from other inmates who are being held at the Baalbek and Roumieh prisons.
“A number of inmates and policemen have been interrogated and the Baalbek prison does not contain the backdrops that appeared in the videos and pictures,” Gendarmerie chief Brig. Gen. Elias Saade said at a press conference.
“None of the masks and clothes (that appear in the video) and no cellphones were found at the Baalbek prison … and inmates of all sects enjoy positive relations among each other and they support each other,” Saade added.
He stated that “the issue seems to be a hoax,” noting that no marks of abuse were found on the body of any inmate.
Saade also pointed out that none of the prisoners have complained of abuse by other inmates.
“Investigations are still ongoing and the policemen and inmates might be interrogated again,” Saade added, dismissing the videos and pictures as a “farce.”
Turning to the al-Qobbeh prison, the police chief said “the pictures and the video are real but the issue happened five months ago.”
“Those who carried out the act all belong to the same sect and it turned out that they had agreed to capture the video so that one of the dangerous inmates could blackmail the brother of one of the prisoners who appears in the footage,” Saade said.
“There was no real violence or harm and the issue was a total hoax and no inmates were threatened,” he added.
As for the Roumieh prison, Saade said security forces focused their investigations on the tattoo and the voice that appear in one of the videos, noting that the tattoo was not found on the arm of any of the Islamist prisoners.
“Investigators determined that the voice in the video is not the voice of one of the suspected inmates,” he revealed.
“The backdrop in the picture does not match any of the rooms in Bloc B and it is impossible that the incident could have happened at the juvenile or convict wards,” Saade added.
“Investigations are still underway but we confirm that there are no threats at the three prisons,” he went on to say.
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