Two
newly freed senior officials of Samir Geagea's Lebanese
Forces gave hair-raising accounts of the physical and
mental torture they were subjected to by the army's
intelligence branch during four-month detention.
The tales of horror were narrated by LF chief of the
students' branch Salman Smaha and Lawyer Elie Keyrouz,
chief of the indoctrination department at a news conference
arranged by a Lebanese human rights organization.
"They
tried to tear me apart. They tied my ankles in rope
and pulled hard in opposite directions," Keyrouz
said. "They beat me and slapped me and kept me
blindfolded and chained for many days and nights."
"I
felt time came to a horrific standstill when I heard
Elie screaming of agony," Smaha said. "I
knew it was Elie because the voice came from the cell
next to mine in the defense ministry."
Smaha
said he was, too, kept blindfolded and chained at
a dungeon so humid that "we thought it is 500
percent high and I also was taken to confinement in
a what looked like animal bars."
Both
Keyrouz and Smaha said they had to sign confessions
they haven't given out of fear of crueler torture,
asserting that the only question made time and again
by the interrogators was about Toufic Hindi's contacts
with the Israelis.
Keyrouz
and Smaha were released on bail a week ago. But they
are committed to stand trial before a military tribunal
on a charge withholding criminal information from
the authorities, which is punishable by up to one
year in prison.
