Radical groups lure Tripoli youths
Leaked videos showing Lebanese security forces torturing Islamist prisoners in Roumieh prison have stirred the anger of Tripoli’s disaffected youths, pushing them further toward extremism.
TRIPOLI, Lebanon — The June 21 leaking of two videos showing the torture of Islamist prisoners in Roumieh prison by members of the Lebanese security forces has inflamed the Sunni street in Tripoli, north Lebanon, and underlined the widening gap between traditional political leaders and the young population, which appears to be being drawn further into extremism.
One of the two videos showed several prisoners stripped to their underwear, handcuffed and kneeling in a cell, where they are beaten by guards. A second video shows a handcuffed, bearded man being repeatedly beaten with a baton and forced to kiss his torturer's boots. The victims were identified as Sunni Islamist detainees held in Roumieh prison.
“If it were my brother featured in that video, I would be the first to have joined the Lahd army,” says Ahmad Tahan, a man in his 30s from Tripoli, in reference to the now-defunct militia that once existed in south Lebanon. Gen. Antoine Lahd led the South Lebanon Army for two decades before the end of the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon in 2000.
Tahan’s friend, who prefers to remain anonymous, adds, “I would have joined the Islamic State [IS].”
