Arabs Complain of Mistreatment at S. Lebanon Prison : Human rights: Some prisoners are beaten, and others are merely relatives of the accused, Shiite Muslims say. Israel disavows responsibility.

There are three things you don’t want to be in Israel’s security zone in southern Lebanon--under 30, male and a Shiite Muslim. Mahmoud Hamadeh was all three, and, he says, it cost him five hard months in an infamous border lockup for no reason.

Misfortune fell on Hamadeh two years ago, when he was 18, as he filled a water tank on his pickup truck at a spring near the southern Lebanese village of Qantarah. He had planned to sell the water to farmers in the area, he said, a profitable business in the dry summer months.

The young Muslim was not aware that on the previous day, the South Lebanon Army, an Israeli-sponsored, Christian-led militia force, saw anti-Israeli guerrillas sneaking guns into the area. The guns were concealed in a truck much like Hamadeh’s, and the militia was watching the area expecting another shipment.

According to Hamadeh’s account, he was seized by eight militia members. They searched his truck and, although they found no weapons, took him to the SLA detention center in the village of Khiam, a few minutes from the frontier.

Khiam Prison, as the Shiites call it, has become a focus of tension in Lebanon, and its prisoners have been proposed as bargaining chips for release of foreign hostages held in Beirut.

In southern Lebanon, the Shiites have been the most resistant to Israeli occupation. Shiite Muslims are also linked to groups that hold the foreign hostages.

According to Lebanese sources, about 350 people are being held at Khiam, among them 30 women. Over the years, these sources say, several thousand Lebanese have been held there for periods ranging from several days to several years.

Some are innocent of any political or military activity but are relatives of men being sought by the South Lebanon Army or the Israelis, according to Lebanese familiar with the center. Thus, they say, detention becomes an indirect, or collective, form of punishment.

Amnesty International, the London-based human rights organization, quoted former inmates of Khiam as saying they had been beaten with clubs, gun butts and lengths of cable.

The 2,500-strong South Lebanon Army, which operates Khiam, is trained, equipped and paid by Israel to control the Israeli-designated “security zone,” a strip of land 6 to 10 miles deep that runs for 50 miles along the Lebanese side of the frontier. The hilly country of scattered villages is a long way from the hostages held in Beirut, but in the minds of some, Khiam provides the connection.

Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine, the front name for the group that freed American hostage Robert Polhill in April, has issued a number of statements calling for the release of prisoners held at Khiam as a condition for the release of more hostages.

Iranian authorities presumed to have influence with the Lebanese hostage-takers complained after the release of Polhill and fellow American Frank H. Reed that the United States did not make a gesture in response, and some Tehran newspapers specifically suggested that release of the detainees at Khiam would be appropriate.

But the South Lebanon Army is paid by the Israelis, and the Israeli government opposes any prisoner swap that does not include three Israeli servicemen believed held by factions of Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese Shiite organization.

Relatives of the men at Khiam refer to them as hostages, too. During demonstrations in Beirut, women press into the hands of foreign reporters scraps of paper bearing the names of the prisoners.

A young Shiite woman who would identify herself only as a teacher of English told an American journalist that she holds the United States at fault for alleged abuses at Khiam. There is a “chain of responsibility” that connects the SLA to Israel and then to Washington, she charged.

“If the United States supports Israel and what it does here,” she said, “then it encourages terrorism. It is a partner.”

Publicly, Israeli officials disown the operation of the Khiam detention center and are reluctant to talk about the facility. “Khiam is under the full control of the SLA,” said a military spokesman in Jerusalem.

Military officials say conditions are improving as the South Lebanon Army “institutionalizes” the use of the building, which is the only jail in the buffer zone. It is used, according to Israeli officials, not only for military prisoners and terrorists but also for common criminals.

Israeli military sources discourage speculation that prisoners from Khiam will be part of any hostage swap, although they say that Maj. Gen. Antoine Lahad, commander of the SLA, has on occasion spoken with local citizens about freeing some detainees for humanitarian reasons.

Ex-prisoner Hamadeh, who says he spent five months in a cramped cubicle with another inmate, told a reporter that the beatings were a minor problem compared to the unsanitary conditions.

Meals, he said, were meager--a boiled egg and a piece of bread--until just before he was released. Then his portions increased, but the food was laden with salt, he said. Because of the salt, he retained water and at the time of his release he appeared full and healthy. Within days, Hamadeh, said, he became thin and pale again.

Michel Dufour, a former head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Lebanon, told a reporter that the organization has asked to send representatives to Khiam but that the SLA and the Israeli government have refused.

Hamadeh and other former prisoners say they saw Israeli soldiers at the camp. Some say they were examined there by Hebrew-speaking medics.

According to a U.N. source who asked not to be identified by name, “only the small fry are kept at Khiam.” He said the important ones are taken to Israel.

Dufour said that in the last six months, the International Red Cross in Israel has seen 50 prisoners who were captured in Lebanon and sent to prisons across the frontier.

In July of last year, an Israeli force abducted a Shiite leader, Sheik Abdel Karim Obeid, in southern Lebanon, outside the security zone. He was taken to Israel. Not long afterward, an American hostage, Marine Lt. Col. William R. Higgins, was reported hanged by his Lebanese militant captors.

Times staff writer Daniel Williams in Jerusalem contributed to this article.