This Islamic militant group had clashed with Lebanese Armed Forces from Jurdi%20-%20Final%20PDF.pdf; For the witness list leak, see “STL Leaks: The Law 212 of April 2, 1993, Creating the Ministry of Social Affairs (Beirut: Dar al-.
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Cover Image: On left: Ain El Remmaneh, Beirut, February 17, 1990. (Roger Moukarzel) On right: Special Tribunal for Lebanon. (STL) Top of map: Court room scene after four judges were assassinated in Saida, on June 8, 1999. (Annahar) Bottom of map: Chi l-dren in Sin el Fil, 1989. (Roger Moukarzel) Design by Edward Beebe
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International Center for Transitional Justice www.ictj.org IIFailing to Deal with the Past : What Cost to Lebanon? ©2014 International Center for Transitional Justice. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without full attribution. Disclaimer: The contents of the publication are the sole responsibility of ICTJ and can in no way be taken to r. Acknowledgments The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) gratefully acknowledges the support of the European Union (EU), which made this project possible. Dima Smaira would like to thank Maya Mansour and Rami Smaira for their advice and support. ICTJ also thanks Nidal Jurdi for conducting a peer review. About the Authors and Contributors Dima Smaira is a researcher based in Lebanon specializing in Lebanese politics and the . She is a PhD candidate in international relations at Durham University (UK). She holds an MA in International Aom the Lebanese American University. Her areas of specialization include issues relating to human security, stability, , and the transformation of security in Lebanon. Roxane Cassehgari is a research assistant at ICTJ. She received her LL.M. from Columbia Law School, with a specialization in human rights, transitional justice, and international criminal law. She holds a dual law degree from Cambridge University (UK) and Panthéon- Assas (France). International Center for Transitional Justice ICTJ assists societies confronting massive human rights abuses to promote accountability, pursue truth, provide reparations, and build trustworthy institutions. Committed to the vindication of victims’ rights and the promotion of gender justice, ICTJ provides expert technical advice, policy analysis, and comparative research on transitional justice approaches, including criminal prosecutions, reparations initiatives, truth seeking and memory, and institutional reform. For more information, visit www.ictj.org
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International Center for Transitional Justice IIIFailing to Deal with the Past : What Cost to Lebanon? www.ictj.org CONTENT Acronyms . ..IV Executive Summary . V1. Introduction .12. Historical Context 33. Legal Framework ..54. Prosecutions .9 4.1 Amnesty Laws . 9 4.2 Excluding SLA Members from Amnesties10 4.3 Trying Cases of Enforced Disappearance in Lebanese Courts .11 4.4 Minimal Action in Holding International Actors Accountable .11 pecial Tribunal for Lebanon 12 5. Truth and Memory .1 5 nknown Fate and Numbers 15 5.2 Commissions of Inquiry on the Missing and Forcibly Disappeared 16 5.3 Draft Law for Missing and Forcibly Disappeared Persons 17 5.4 Memorialization . .18 6. Reparation . .19 eturn of the Displaced ..19 6.2 Compensation . .22 6.3 Rehabilitation .. .23 6.4 Satisfaction: Apologies and Recognition of Responsibility ..24 6.5 Reparations by Nonstate Actors 25 7. Institutional Reform . .27 7.1 Security and Justice Reform 2 7 eed for Comprehensive Institutional Reform 29 7.3 Repercussions of Limited Reforms ..29 8. Conclusion .. ..31 Bibliography .. ..33
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International Center for Transitional Justice www.ictj.org IVFailing to Deal with the Past : What Cost to Lebanon? ACRONYMS CDR Council for Development and Reconstruction CEDAW Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women CRC Convention on the Rights of the Child CRP Community Reconciliation Processes DDR disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration FCLD Committee for the Support of Lebanese Detainees in Israeli Prisons HJC High Judicial Council HRC High relief Commission ICCPED UN Convention on the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance ICCPR International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ICESCR International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights ICRC International Committee for the Red Cross ICTJ International Center for Transitional Justice IDP internally displaced person ISF Internal Security Forces LAF Lebanese Armed Forces LF Lebanese Forces LMAC Lebanon Mine Action Centre LNM Lebanese National Movement MoD Ministry of the Displaced NGO nongovernmental organization PLO Palestinian Liberation Organization SC UN Security Council SLA South Lebanon Army SOLIDE Support of Lebanese in Detention and Exile SOLIDERE Société Libanaise pour le Développement et la Reconstruction de Beyrouth STL Special Tribunal for Lebanon UN United Nations UNIIIC UN International Independent Investigation Commission UNIFIL UN Interim Force in Lebanon UNRWA UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees
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International Center for Transitional Justice www.ictj.org VIFailing to Deal with the Past : What Cost to Lebanon? ecommends a holistic approach to crafting a comprehensive and victim-centered transitional justice process in Lebanon. An incremental approach to reform would be of value, given the likely challenges to pursuing accountability in the country. Programming must involve state and nonstate actors—political and community leaders, civil society, and the broader public. In addition, human rights champions need to be further supported, and the progress that local groups have made needs to be maintained and prena open to both Lebanese and foreign stakeholders.
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www.ictj.org 11. Introduction Lebanon is a deeply divided country, carrying a long legacy of human rights violations. Ited an internationalized war from 1975 to 1990 and persistent instability due to an array of domestic and external factors, including sectarianism and regional confrontations. For decades, Lebanon has elationships with its neighboring countries, as regional powers have attempted to use it as a pawn in their own power struggles. 1t is estimated that some 2.7 percent of the population was killed as a result of violence, 4 percent wounded (the overwhelming majority being civilians), 30 percent displaced, and about 33 percent have emigrated. 2 Further, 0.36 percent of the population was permanently disabled, and 0.75 percent forcibly disappeared. 3 Serious human rights violations have included systematic and mass displacement, wide-scale killing, rape, torture, arbitrary detention, and enforced disappearance. 4 , known as the Document of National Accord (or the Ta’if Agreement), established a powent warring parties. Negotiators attempted to achieve national unity by rwer. 5 Given the massive scale of the war’s destruction and the number of victims, the country needed to adopt a sweeping approach to justice and reform in order to transition successfully from war to e included addrough a comprehensive transitional justice strategy, which typically encompasses prosecution, truth and memorialization, reparation, and institutional res recognize the rights of victims and promote accountability while limiting a culture of impunity. 6 Yet, at the conclusion of the war, there was no attempt to deal with its legacy. Rathered transitional process emanated from a consensus reached at Ta’s pr included a general amnesty, no truth seeking, mismanaged reparations, and incomplete institutional reform, all of which undermined prospects for justice and national reconciliation. Limits were placed 1 Internal allegiances and identities have served as proxies or extensions of transnational regional ones, and Lebanese minorit ies have sought to protect their position in the distribution of power by reaching out to foreign powers, thus facilitating outside intervention. 2 Boutros Labaki and Khalil Abou Rjeili, Bilan des Guerres au Liban (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1993) 37, 211–212. Government estimates . ICTJ, “Lebanon’s Legacy of Political Violence: A Mapping of Serious Violations of International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Lebanon, 1975–2008” (New York: ICTJ, 2013). 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Tai’f is available at www.un.int/wcm/content/lang/en/pid/1723 6 In 2004 the UN Secretary-General reported to the UN Security Council on rule of law and transitional justice, noting the important role that accountability and justice have in restoring the dignity of victims of serious abuses as well as in helping to create an environment that limits the prospects of recurrence of such violations: “Bringing to justice those responsible for se rious violations of human rights and humanitarian law, putting an end to such violations and preventing their recurrence, securing justice and dignity for victims, establishing a record of past events, promoting national reconciliation, re-establishing the r ule of law and contributing to the restoration of peace.”
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International Center for Transitional Justice www.ictj.org 2Failing to Deal with the Past : What Cost to Lebanon? on what matters could be brought to the public’s attention, based on what former warlords viewed as unwarranted tresulted in the denial of truth and justice for thousands of victims of the war. As noted by the late Sheikh Hussein Fadlallah, the price of Lebanon’s appr leaving things in the past—has been to “la[y] the ground for all the violence that we see in Lebanon.” 7eport, one of three complementary publications produced by ICTJ as part of a two-year European Union-funded project, “Addrivided Society,” analyzes the persistent situation of impunity in Lebanon and its consequences through the lens and framework of the four pillars of transitional justice: prosecution, truth seeking, reparation, and institutional r and humanitarian law in Lebanon and a study of the needs and expectations of people in Lebanon regarding dealing with the past. Together, these publications will serve as resources to support and inform debates about the past in Lebanon by civil society and policymakers alike. In close coordination with a consortium of academics, civil society representatives, and victims’ groups, ICTJ will devecommendations for dealing with Lebanon’s past in a way that can support accountability, rule of law, and sustainable peace. 7 Author’s extrapolation from criticism by the late Sheikh Hussein Fadlallah, a prominent spiritual guide to the Shiite communi ty in Lebanon, regarding the General Amnesty Law, quoted in Marieke Wierda et al, “Early Rocal Perceptions, Legitimacy and Legacy of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.” Journal of International Criminal Justice 5 (2007): 1065–81.
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www.ictj.org 32. Historical Context ears leading up to Lebanon’s 1975−1990 war were rife with socioeconomic and political upheaval. D Palestinian armed presence in Lebanon) further polarized the Lebanese population, largely along sectarian lines. Two main camps developed in the years before the war: 1) the right-wing Christian alliance, formed by the Lebanese Front and led by the Phalange party; and 2) the leftist Muslim alliance (the Lebanese National Movement (LNM)), led by Kamal Joumblat, head of the Progressive Socialist Party. 8camps took opposing stances on the Palestinian prtunity to align Lebanon with the pan-Arab Nasserite axis and bring about domestic reform. 9ront, however, saw it as a threat to both the status quo and a Westward-looking Lebanese identity, and as a trigger for Arab-I While confrontations between the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), and the main Lebanese pr 10 it was not until 1975 that polarization led to widesprk was ignited on April 13, 1975, 11 when members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Ped on Phalange members as they left a church in the Beirut suburb of Ain al-Rummaneh; next, in what seemed to be a red on a bus heading to the Tall al-Zaatar Palestinian camp, killing 29 passengers. Soon after the “Ain al-Rummaneh bus incident,oke out between the two main factions and spread across Beir years saw gravery part of the country. 12 irect foreign intervention came from the Palestinian factions, Israel, and Snterim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) was deployed as a peace-keeping force south of the Litani River. Foreign sponsors and/or supporters included France, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. A political deal was brokered to end the war on October 22, 1989, when Lebanese members of Parliament gathered in the Saudi town of Ta’if to sign the Document of National Accord (or Ta’if Agreement). 13eement spelled out the terms of the postwar period and heralded the Second Republic. Numerous Lebanese involved in creating the agreement—many of them warlords—sought to turn the page on the war, but in a way that neither incriminated them nor revived old animosities. 8 Fawwaz Traboulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon (London and Ann Arbor. MI: Pluto Press, 2007), 176. 9 Egyptian President General Gamal Abdel Nasser was the msot prominent proponent of leftist Arab nationalism and the nonaligned movement during the Cold War. 10 A series of clashes between the Palestinian Fida™iyin and the Lebanese army started in 1968. A History of Modern Lebanon ., 153. 11 For further information on the war, see ICTJ, “Lebanon’s Legacy of Political Violence,” 2013. See also Traboulsi, A History of Modern Lebanon or Samir Kassir. La Guerrégional (Paris: Karthala, 1994). 12 ICTJ, “Lebanon’s Legacy of Political Violence.” 13 The agreement was r, 1989, but General Michel Aoun, then interim prime minister, refused the terms. The war continued until his defeat by Syrian troops on October 13, 1990. He then was exiled to France for 15 years.
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