CAMP: 1,200 Lebanon Captives Transferred to Prison in Israel

About 1,200 Lebanese prisoners from the Israeli army’s top-security Ansar detention camp, about 15 miles west of here, were moved across the border Tuesday to a prison in northwestern Israel.

The move was carried out in secret, and there appeared to be some question about its legality under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.

A spokesman for the Israeli military in Tel Aviv said the prisoners, mostly Shia Muslims, were moved temporarily to Israel “due to the absence of a better immediate solution in Lebanon which will ensure their security and proper internment conditions.”

Some to Be Freed

And Lt. Gen. Moshe Levy, the Israeli chief of staff, said the prisoners will be released “as security conditions warrant.”

The military spokesman said that about 600 other prisoners, considered less dangerous, are to be released today in southern Lebanon under the supervision of the International Red Cross.

The prisoners transferred to Israel, he said, took “an active part in terrorist activities against Israel, and their release at this time could endanger IDF (Israeli military) forces and Lebanese citizens.”

More than 25% of the prisoners held at Ansar were arrested in the last five weeks under Israel’s “iron fist” policy of raiding Shia Muslim villages considered to be staging areas for guerrilla attacks on Israeli occupation troops in southern Lebanon.

The route taken in Tuesday’s operation was closed off to all other traffic and heavily guarded. Four Jerusalem-based foreign correspondents who had traveled to southern Lebanon on Monday were told in advance that they would not be permitted to recross the border into Israel on Tuesday, apparently to prevent their witnessing the prisoner transfer.

Israel radio reported that the area to which the prisoners were moved was sealed off and declared a security zone. Officials would not disclose the exact location.

The 1949 Geneva Convention prohibits the movement of civilian prisoners across international borders. Ruth Lapidot, former legal adviser to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, said in an interview on Israel television Tuesday night that the Fourth Geneva Convention states clearly “that the power that arrests cannot put the prisoners in danger.”

And Israel radio quoted Chief of Staff Levy as saying that moving the civilian prisoners from Ansar to another prison inside Lebanon “would have meant a greater danger of clashes in which people would get hurt.”

Just Inside Zone

Ansar is just inside the Israeli occupation zone in southern Lebanon, and its location was a major consideration in drawing the line defining that zone. Evacuation of the camp will free Israeli troops to speed their withdrawal from the western sector of the occupation zone--an area that was originally not to be evacuated until the final stage of what was planned as a three-stage withdrawal from Lebanon.

It is in the western sector that guerrilla attacks against Israeli troops have been most frequent.

Military sources here had said in off-the-record briefings that the authorities were considering moving prisoners from Ansar to a new camp just north of the border in a Christian-dominated buffer zone to be patrolled after Israel’s withdrawal by the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army.

The suggestion that such a move might endanger the prisoners implies that Israel could not guarantee the safety of Muslim prisoners if they were held by the South Lebanon Army, which is led by Christian officers.

‘Bigger Supply of People’

It was suggested to a military source that the prisoners’ transfer and Levy’s remarks linking their release to security conditions in southern Lebanon made it appear that they were being held hostage against continuing guerrilla attacks on Israeli troops, and he replied:

“Definitely, if the origin of attacks against us is Amal (the main Shia Muslim militia), we won’t give them a bigger supply of people.”

Ansar was established nearly three years ago. At one time, it contained about 5,000 Palestine Liberation Organization guerrillas captured in Israel’s June, 1982, invasion of Lebanon. Most of the Palestinians were freed in November, 1983, in exchange for six Israeli prisoners of war.

As southern Lebanon’s indigenous Shia Muslims turned increasingly against the Israeli occupation, Ansar began to fill.

The detention camp covers about 12,000 square yards and lies 28 miles north of the Israeli border. It consists of rectangular sections separated by chain-link and barbed-wire fences. Each rectangle contains 10 tents and up to 150 prisoners.

Camp officials told a group of visiting journalists over the weekend that the prisoners were allowed family visits every Monday and that the Red Cross inspected the facility every Tuesday. Nonetheless, tension at the camp was high.