Israel Releases 752 Arabs, Begins Dismantling Camp

The Israeli army Wednesday freed the last 752 Arab prisoners at its Ansar military detention center in southern Lebanon and began dismantling the grim, barbed-wire-enclosed compounds in which the mostly Shia Muslim prisoners had been held for up to 16 months.

The defiant prisoners, dressed in navy blue jogging suits and tennis shoes, sang nationalistic songs, chanted “Death to Israel!” and the name of Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and flashed V-for-victory signs.

Several pledged openly to continue active resistance against the Israeli military occupation of southern Lebanon. Israel is in the midst of a three-phase withdrawal from the country, expected to be completed as early as next month.

“What other country would let these people go vowing they’ll be back in action this afternoon?” commented one Israeli officer to one of the scores of foreign journalists escorted north from Israel by the army to witness the event.

Five wounded internees were taken out of the tent camp by ambulance. Three were on crutches and two on stretchers. The nature of their injuries was unclear, although prisoners and Israeli guards agreed that at least one internee was shot in the legs in recent days while trying to escape.

Wednesday’s prisoner release, supervised by the International Red Cross, followed by one day the controversial transfer of about 1,200 other former Ansar detainees to an unspecified prison in Israel.

The Red Cross protested the transfer in a statement issued in Geneva on Wednesday, saying the move violated Articles 49 and 76 of the 1949 Geneva Convention, which prohibit the forcible transfer of civilians from their own country to the territory of an occupying power. Similar criticism came from the State Department in Washington. (Story, Page 19.)

The transferred prisoners, bound and blindfolded, were secretly loaded onto heavily guarded buses Tuesday morning and driven in convoy to Israel. An Israeli army statement said the 1,200 men are considered especially dangerous, and that they had taken “an active part in terrorist activities” against Israeli troops in Lebanon.

The Israeli armed forces chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Moshe Levy, said Tuesday that the transferred men will be released “as security conditions warrant.” Israeli officials had no immediate public response to the Red Cross charges. But privately, they have suggested that the Fourth Geneva Convention implicitly permits the transfer of civilian prisoners across the border when it is deemed necessary for the safety of the detainees.

None of the prisoners at Ansar were ever tried for any crime, and since they are not members of any regular army, Israel argues that they are not entitled to prisoner of war status.

The final 752 prisoners freed Wednesday had not been accused of specific anti-Israeli activity.

100 Expelled by Israelis

Nonetheless, said Michel Cagneaux, head of the Red Cross observer team here, 100 of the detainees were expelled by the Israelis against their will from Israeli-occupied territory. About 350 others left Israeli-occupied territory voluntarily, he said. The remainder were freed at one of three sites in the south so they could make their own way back to their villages.

Each received a form letter from the Israeli army command along with his personal belongings Wednesday morning saying that he was being granted “a chance to live peacefully with your loved ones” but warning that “we know all about you” and that if the former internee engaged in any hostile activity against Israel, “we’ll find a way to deal with you.”

Cagneaux and 20 other Red Cross personnel interviewed each of the released prisoners to determine his wishes, the official said. He added that the Red Cross was not notified of the planned release until Tuesday morning and that it had not been on hand when the other 1,200 prisoners were transferred to Israel.

All the prisoners were driven out of Ansar in open-sided army trucks, bound for a variety of drop-off points. Those who were to remain in occupied territory had their hands bound with locking plastic strips normally used to bundle electrical cables.

Red Cross Warning

At one point, a Red Cross official warned Israeli army authorities that “this convoy will not move” until one prisoner’s swelling hands were freed. The detainees, most of them already loaded onto trucks, began chanting and singing defiant songs as soon as they saw the Western television cameras arrive.

“We will keep fighting until we come back to our homeland,” pledged Nader Muhammed, 27, one of a minority of Palestinian prisoners included in the release. He said he was captured on the open sea 200 miles off the coast of Haifa by the Israeli navy and interned in Ansar 15 months ago.

Muhammed said he was headed for Beirut and then to Yemen where he plans to rejoin “my commander”--Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat.

“We are going to keep fighting the existence of Israel in our country,” said another prisoner, who refused to give his name or the name of his village. A Shia Muslim, he said he had been in Ansar for 10 months and that he had been active in the Lebanese guerrilla resistance.

Sometimes There Are Mistakes

Other prisoners, like 47-year-old Hassan Wabi from Arnoun, said he belonged to no resistance group and that his arrest five months earlier had been an error. “Sometimes in a war there are many mistakes,” he said.

Many of the released prisoners carried copies of the Koran and the camp commander, identified only as Col. Yossi, said the men became more religious during their internment. He said treatment of the prisoners has been “fair and humane.”

An Israeli guard got angry after overhearing prisoners complain to the journalists about conditions in the camp. “They get anything they want here,” said the guard, a reservist who is a dental hygienist in civilian life. “They have it better here than they have it in their homes.”

He said the prisoners often threw stones and human feces at the guards and tried to escape. “How do you expect Israel to react? To give them ice cream? They’re prisoners!” he told a journalist.