Notorius Torture Prison of Khiam Destroyed ¶ UN Bunker on Hilltop near Khiam

It reads as a small item in the news of Israel’s War of Attrition in Lebanon :

Israeli jets also raided a detention centre in the town of Khiam in south Lebanon, witnesses and local TV said. The notorious Khiam prison, formerly run by Israel’s Lebanese militia allies during its occupation of south Lebanon, was destroyed in four bombing runs by Israeli jets.

The former ‘Abu Ghraib’ style prison was being used as anti-Israel information center of the period when South Lebanon was occupied by the IDF and SLA forces.

● Israeli bombardment of a U.N. observation near Khiam
● Canadian Among Four UN Observers Killed

Smoke rises from Khiam village after being hit by Israeli air strikes, in southern Lebanon. Karamallah Daher/Reuters  

Inside a Torturers’ Den, Manacles Lie Abandoned

By Robert Fisk at Khiam Jail
from The Independent (United Kingdom)
25 May 2000

The torturers had just left but the horror remained. There was the whipping pole and the window grilles where prisoners were tied naked for days, freezing water thrown over them at night. Then there were the electric leads for the little dynamo — the machine mercifully taken off to Israel by the interrogators — which had the inmates shrieking with pain when the electrodes touched their fingers or penises. And there were the handcuffs which an ex-prisoner handed to me yesterday afternoon.

Engraved into the steel were the words: “The Peerless Handcuff Co. Springfield, Mass. Made in USA.” And I wondered, as I stood there in Israel’s most shameful prison, if the executives over in Springfield knew what they were doing when they sold these manacles.

…
Abdullah Attiyeh walked me to the prison guardpost on the walls and looked out at the land and mountains he was never allowed to see during his imprisonment. “This place,” he said, “should be kept forever as a witness to our history.”

[The IAF with four bombing runs, took care of that historical place of Israel’s war crimes in Lebanon – Oui]

Photostory: Khiam Detention Camp

Khiam prison was a detention and interrogation camp during the years of the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. From 1985 until the Israeli defeat in May 2000, Lebanese and Palestinian detainees were held in Khiam without trial. Most of them were brutally tortured – some of them died.

Soon after the Israeli withdrawal from South Lebanon, the guards of the notorious Khiam prison fled, leaving the prisoners free. Men, women and children had been held in appalling conditions.

Among the prisoners were Lebanese journalist Cosette Ibrahim, kidnapped while reporting in southern Lebanon. Some of the detainees were children, like 15-year-old Ali Tawbeh, who with his parents was dragged from his home by the Israeli occupation forces in 1997.

  «« click on pic to enlarge
Photo: Arjan El Fassed

After the Israeli withdrawal, residents of Khiam village stormed the detention centre and released all remaining 144 detainees.

● Israel’s Forgotten Hostages: Lebanese Detainees
in Israel and Khiam Detention Centre

Hat tip: phone contact ◊ by Arcturus
Wed Jul 26th, 2006 at 08:50:45 AM PST

Btw, this is the town where the Israeli sponsored SLA had their own version of Abu Ghraib during the civil war. It was bombed to smithereens the other day, obliterating all historical evidence of its infamous torture cells.