‘Dire scenario’: Lebanese prisoners on starvation strike for 18 days | Information

The medical situation of dozens of prisoners has deteriorated as inmates protest towards suspension of amnesty regulation.

The medical situation of dozens of inmates on a starvation strike for greater than two weeks inside Lebanon’s largest jail has turn out to be “dire”, in response to a authorized campaigner.

“About 400 prisoners are on a starvation strike for greater than two weeks. Ambulances enter every day to take [dozens of] them away as a result of their situation is dire,” Mohammed Sablouh, a Lebanese lawyer, informed Al Jazeera.

“The prisoners are refusing remedy, meals and water,” Sablouh, who can also be the director of the Prisoners’ Rights Center on the Tripoli Bar Association, stated on Wednesday.

The inmates at Roumieh jail went on a starvation strike on September 12 in protest towards the suspension of a common amnesty regulation, which might have granted a right away launch or diminished their sentences.

Protests have additionally been staged in Lebanon’s second metropolis of Tripoli towards the suspension of the regulation, which has a provision to launch inmates jailed for petty crimes.

Many of the prisoners on starvation strike had been arrested for his or her solidarity with the Syrian revolution towards President Bashar al-Assad, who was toppled in December 2024 after greater than 10 years of bloody battle.

The Free Patriotic Movement, one of many nation’s largest events, filed an attraction earlier than the Constitutional Council over considerations that a number of the inmates had been charged with “terrorism”.

The Constitutional Council is anticipated to difficulty its verdict subsequent month.

Overcrowded prisons

Lebanese prisons are infamous for being overcrowded and hundreds of inmates spend years behind bars with out trial. Lebanon’s present jail inhabitants stands at about 8,500, almost double its capability.

The regulation handed on August 12 aimed to handle overcrowded jail circumstances within the nation.

“Prison overcrowding exceeds 330 % of the services’ precise capability,” Sablouh stated.

“The scenario in Lebanon’s prisons is really tragic, it will probably now not face up to any … shock or any overturning of the amnesty regulation.”

More than 40 prisoners died in 2025. “Some died because of medical neglect, others beneath torture. Some died by suicide because of extended trials and repeated postponements,” Sablouh stated.

The Lebanese lawyer blamed judicial delays for the big variety of inmates, lots of them arrested for petty crimes.

He identified the failure of the judiciary “to stick to Article 108 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which units a restrict for pre-trial detention: two months for misdemeanours, renewable for an equal interval, and 6 months for felonies, renewable for an equal interval [up to a maximum of one year].”