Outrage over Lebanese Court Acquittal of ‘Israeli’ Agent ‘Under US Pressure’

By Staff, Agencies

After Beirut tribunal dropped charges against an ‘Israeli’ collaborator who is accused of overseeing the torture and killing of captives at a prison facility in southern Lebanon some two decades ago, Hezbollah and rights activists said the verdict was issued under pressure from the US.

Dual Lebanese-American national, Amer Fakhoury, was accused of murder, attempted murder, kidnapping and torture while presiding over Khiam Prison run by the ‘Israeli’-sponsored so-called South Lebanon Army [SLA] militia group — formed by army defectors — during the Zionist regime’s 1982-2000 occupation of southern Lebanon.

Widely known as the ‘Butcher of Khiam,’ Fakhoury fled Lebanon along with hundreds of other SLA members after the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon drove ‘Israel’ out of the country in 2000.

Fakhoury settled in the US state of New Hampshire, but was arrested last September when he returned to Lebanon on vacation to visit his family.

On Monday, the Military Tribunal ordered his release, saying more than 10 years had passed since the defendant allegedly kidnapped, imprisoned and tortured the Lebanese held at the prison camp, the official National News Agency of Lebanon reported.

Lebanon’s intelligence service said Fakhoury had confessed during questioning to being a warden at Khiam Prison.

Hezbollah condemned the ruling as a “miserable step for justice” and said the court had turned a blind eye to the crimes he had committed.

In January, US Senator Jeanne Shaheen said she was drafting a sanctions bill against Lebanon “to hold those accountable who are complicit in Fakhoury’s arrest.”

Aya Majzoub, Lebanon researcher for Human Rights Watch [HRW], told the Doha-based Al Jazeera broadcaster that Fakhoury’s acquittal, “reportedly due to a US threat to impose sanctions, makes a mockery” of Lebanon’s justice system.

For his part, Nabih Awada, an ex-inmate at Khiam Prison and one of the plaintiffs in the case, said Fakhoury, who was a top-level commander at the jail, had threatened to kill him shortly before he was released in 1998.