Lebanon Walks a Fine Line in Trials of Accused Israel Collaborators

Heads shaved and bowed, hands clasped behind their backs, the men on trial for collaborating with Israel stood before a Lebanese military judge and asked for mercy.

Most said they were forced to work for Israel’s proxy militia during the Jewish state’s 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon. Their sentences, handed down in record time, ranged from six months to 15 years at hard labor.

Lebanon has begun prosecuting about 1,700 men and a few women who served in or assisted the South Lebanon Army, the Israeli surrogate that collapsed in the initial stages of Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon last month. At least 6,000 others fled to Israel rather than face prosecution or because they feared reprisals.

Cases Spur Debate on Reconciliation

With the controversial trials comes a wider debate here on the meaning of justice in a country that never came to terms with its own devastating civil war, which ended a decade ago, and on whether reconciliation is best served by harsh punishment or magnanimous leniency.

Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim guerrilla movement that fought to oust Israel from Lebanon and is now essentially running things in the south, has demanded stiff sentences for SLA collaborators and threatened to take the law into its own hands if punishment is inadequate.

Some politicians and religious leaders, primarily from Christian factions, want the cases heard before a civilian rather than military court and have complained that the defendants are being denied basic rights. Amnesty International, the London-based human rights organization, also has raised concerns about the fairness of the judicial process.

The government apparently hopes to offer those who suffered under the Israeli and SLA occupation some semblance of justice, while not allowing society to delve too deeply into an exploration of the conflict. Better to let everyone forget and move on.

That, analysts note, is the same way Lebanon has dealt with its fratricidal civil war, in which tens of thousands of people were killed, several thousand remain unaccounted for and a nation was left irreparably fragmented. A general amnesty at the end of the 1975-90 civil war meant that all but a handful of war criminals went unpunished; some of the same warlords who led the slaughter continue to serve in government.

“Hezbollah would like to use the SLA trials as a stage to look at the crimes of the occupation,” said Michael Young, an analyst with the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies. “But the state does not want too much sectarian tension. So it’s being done quickly and under the rug.”

This is made easier by the fact that most of those on trial are small fry. The most senior commanders fled to Israel or beyond. And only about 15% to 20% of those under arrest in Lebanon are Christian; the rest are Shiite Muslim, with a small number of Druze.

Court proceedings inside the Tribunal Militaire in Beirut have been opened to the media. On two recent trial days, judgment was swift.

The defendants, sometimes in a group and sometimes individually, stood before a lectern adorned with a Bible and a Koran. A court officer gave a brief reading of the charges, and the presiding judge, Gen. Maher Safieddine, usually with a grimace somewhere between a smirk and a scowl, asked questions of the defendant or his attorney.

Some of the defendants had done nothing more than join the thousands of southern Lebanese who crossed routinely into Israel to work in factories and farms. Others had more serious involvement, including one who allegedly killed a captive.

White-whiskered defendant Nayef Moussa, 60, tried to explain that his role in the SLA was minimal.

“I was just working as a guard,” he said.

“If we lined up all those who were ‘just working as a guard,’ ” the judge retorted, “we’d have a queue from here to Tyre.”

Adib Farhat, a man in his early 40s dressed in a lavender nylon track suit, explained that he worked for the SLA only in his capacity as a civil engineer, building projects and never taking up weapons.

But Judge Safieddine pointed to evidence of what he apparently believed to be Farhat’s much deeper collaboration: repeated promotions within the SLA civil administration, the raise in his monthly salary from $90 to $460 and his meetings two or three times a month with Israeli officials. Even casual contact with an Israeli is a felony under Lebanese law.

All of the accused argued for extenuating circumstances, saying their actions were a matter of survival under occupation. One defendant pleaded that working for the SLA was the only way he could feed his children. Another said he was threatened with imprisonment if he didn’t join. And so it went.

Outside the courthouse, a knot of families crowded onto one street corner, straining for a glimpse of relatives each time the prisoners were transported to or from the building. They were desperate for news.

“I come every day to see if the guards bring them in, but I haven’t seen them,” said a worried Maryam Slayman, a Shiite Muslim whose brother, brother-in-law and three cousins worked for the SLA and turned themselves in to authorities. “They keep telling me, ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow.’ I don’t know what will happen.”

Inside the marble-floored courtroom, each defendant received a hearing before a panel of military judges headed by Safieddine that lasted, on average, about seven to 15 minutes. Defense attorneys, appointed by the Lebanese Bar Assn., often seemed unfamiliar with the details of the cases.

Defendants overflowed from a holding pen on one side of the courtroom and filled the pews normally reserved for spectators. Their heads were shaved, as is the custom in Lebanese military prisons, and they were certainly a somber bunch. But none were handcuffed or shackled.

Haste of Hearings Worries Rights Groups

In almost every case, the judges handed down a verdict and sentence the night after the accused appeared. The rulings of the Tribunal Militaire cannot be appealed.

Technically, a man who serves an occupation army would be guilty of treason, a crime punishable in Lebanon with death. For those who lived in the long-neglected southern swath of Lebanon that Israel dominated for two decades, however, there was little choice but to leave or accommodate. Israel was one of the only sources of income, and Lebanese in the south were frequently trapped in “the zone,” unable to seek employment in the north.

It is the haste of the hearings that worries human rights organizations. Undue speed, they argue, allows for neither the clearing of the truly innocent nor the adequate punishing of those guilty of more egregious crimes.

Chief Military Prosecutor Nasri Lahoud--whose brother is President Emile Lahoud--defended the trials and sentences as fair.

Facing complaints from Hezbollah, the court added a proviso to the sentences: a ban prohibiting convicted collaborators from returning to their home villages for up to five years.

“With light sentences, people suffer because they don’t see justice being done,” said Mohammed Raad, head of the Hezbollah politburo and a member of the Lebanese parliament. “Those who call now for light sentences want to forgive whenever they want. It’s not the right moment now to forgive.”

Vigilantes Attack 2 Released Suspects

He warned of repercussions if collaborators aren’t punished. In the ugliest incident reported so far, two accused collaborators who were freed by the court for health reasons returned to their home in the southern town of Aitaroun and were beaten by revenge-seeking vigilantes.

Also in Aitaroun, 20 other men believed to have worked for the SLA but who never turned themselves in were rounded up by gunmen 10 days ago, and their whereabouts are unknown, according to reports in the Lebanese press.

Of all those who suffered under Israeli occupation, it is probably the people who were imprisoned, tortured and interrogated at the notorious SLA-run Khiam prison who most want to see severe punishment of collaborators.

Bilal Nabaa, a onetime teacher from the southern village of Shebal, was held at Khiam for nearly two years, beaten repeatedly and kept for days in a dank solitary confinement cell the size of a coffin.

“They must be given a taste of what we got,” he said.