BEIRUT: In the beginning the signs were as innocuous as the wife of an Islamist inmate attempting to smuggle in a ring emblazoned with the black and white standard of ISIS.
But when a Block B guard confiscated the contraband item in September, he knew it was imperative to proceed with caution. The ramifications of such a move would surely ricochet well beyond the walls of Roumieh Prison.
Up until the early hours of Monday morning, the Internal Security Forces had avoided using force to impose order in the notorious Block B. Police raided the jail block after intercepting calls between Islamist inmates and members of the cell behind Saturday’s twin suicide bombings in Tripoli that killed nine people.
Authorities had previously refrained from using force because of the ramifications it might have on the ongoing negotiations to free 25 servicemen captured by ISIS and Nusra Front militants during clashes in Arsal in August.
Over the course of six months, security sources from the prison repeatedly told The Daily Star that the negotiations over the captive servicemen had bolstered the confidence of some prisoners. The release of Islamist inmates is a key demand for the militants who are holding the Lebanese servicemen hostage.
Both the families of the hostages and of the inmates questioned the timing of Monday’s operation at Roumieh Prison.
“Why now? Why mess with the No. 1 demand of the Nusra Front now?” asked Sheikh Khaled Sayyed, a spokesperson for inmates’ families.
The Nusra Front vowed on a Twitter account that it would deliver “some surprises about the fate of our war captives.” The same account later published a picture of a dozen captive soldiers laying face down in the snow and five gunmen standing behind them with a caption reading, “Who will pay the price?”
On their WhatsApp group forum, the families of the hostages were franticly taking turns deciphering the Nusra Front’s cryptic threat.
“No call from Nusra or ISIS, yet,” Nizam Helou, the father of a hostage wrote late in the evening Monday.
Prison staff and officials familiar with the situation at Roumieh say maintaining order at Block B posed a unique set of challenges.
“Block B is difficult to control because those inside are considered ‘special security cases,’” said Omar Nashabeh, an aide to former Interior Minister Ziad Baroud.
“The ISF is given the task of managing and guarding the prison, but it shouldn’t be the job of the police, this is a specific field that requires specialization,” he said, adding that the Interior Ministry ought not to have disclosed that the raid was linked to Saturday’s bombings in Tripoli.
“This may be seriously damaging to the whole investigative process.”
On that September day when the shrewd warden discovered the ring, a security source recounted, he did two things that encapsulated just how prisoner-police dynamics had changed since the August clashes in Arsal, when the lives of the Islamist prisoners became inextricably linked to those of the hostage servicemen.
The guard paged staff surrounding the waiting area where the families of inmates were undergoing routine security checks and informed them to keep calm, a sign that his next move might rile up prisoners.
“I can’t do anything by force,” a source from the prison had told The Daily Star back in October. “Because I think if you want to do anything by force you will have to expect that on the other side of the country, someone’s head will roll.”
The ring was meant for inmate Talal Abdul Rahman Radwan, known as Abu Arabi, a high-profile Fatah al-Islam member sentenced to death by the Judicial Council for his role in the 2007 Nahr al-Bared clashes. Prison staff seldom spoke to the inconspicuous man but it was known that he had a bad temper.
Eight months of interacting with the Islamists of Block B had taught police to be direct but never confrontational. “I have to act normal with them, make them feel like I’m not doing anything wrong,” one prison source said.
The warden walked over to the jail from his office, prevented Abu Arabi’s wife from visiting, and when the incensed prisoners prepared to make noise, he made it plainly known that the ISIS-inscribed ring would not enter the parameters. An intense debate ensued, tensions rose. “It’s like having arrows thrown at you from all sides,” a security source said, describing interactions such as these.
But while the matter with the ring was resolved, similar heated moments would come to define relations between Roumieh staff and Islamists inmates. By November, prisoners linked to Fatah al-Islam, in particular those expecting harsh sentences, began refusing to attend Judicial Council hearings. At this time, the question of employing elite ISF forces to oblige them to leave their cells was considered but ruled out.
“They believe ISIS will take them out,” a security source said. “Whenever ISIS says something about the officers in their custody, [to the effect of] ‘you take our friends, we take your friends,’ the people in the block believe they will be part of a trade.”
“Somebody maybe told them it was better to be detainee and not a convict, maybe because if you have a ruling its more difficult to get a pardon,” the source added.
During this time prison staff felt caught between the defiant prisoners and an affronted judiciary. They worked to convince inmates and to appease judges, but when the use of force was broached, “someone up in the sky” decided against it, a security source said. And so, some inmates stopped going to trial.
In Block B, as in any organized society, there were leaders and followers. Of the thousand or so prisoners housed there, about 328 are considered national security cases. Among them are approximately 74 inmates who are members of Fatah al-Islam, 55 from Tripoli neighborhood Bab al-Tabbaneh, 16 detained during the Abra clashes of June 2013, and two-dozen are ISIS and Nusra Front members, many of them young men, detained since the Arsal clashes.
“The security operation [of Monday] is not only about Fatah al-Islam prisoners anymore,” said Sheikh Sayyed, the spokesperson. “There are many different inmates and it’s more complicated.”
At the helm were 10-15 prisoners, some of them preachers, who rarely engaged with the staff and remained ensconced in the block’s third floor, where they held Islamic classes.
Other high-profile detainees include Syrian national Yaser Mohammad Shukairi, or Abu Saleh, a preacher implicated in the Ain Alak bombing of 2007, Yemeni nationals Salim Abdulkarim Saleh, or Abu Turab, an explosives expert, and Naser Mohammad Shiba, or Abu al-Hor, both of whom have not been sentenced but expect the death penalty.
At the top of the list, according to security sources, are Nouri Nasr Hajji, or Abu al-Baraa, an explosives expert, and Syrian Mohammad Saleh Zawawi, or Abu Salim Taha, Fatah al-Islam’s former spokesperson and preacher.
Before Monday’s raid it was widely assumed that certain inmates were communicating with jihadi groups, using smartphones that are technically forbidden. Days before ISIS announced the beheading of soldier Ali Sayyed in September, a security source said an inmate relayed the news murkily during a casual exchange: “He said to wait because they would announce ‘something’ in the coming days.”
But the issue of clamping down on cellphone usage inside the facility has always been a double-edged sword, Nashabeh explained: “On one hand it [lax cellphone regulation] allows [the ISF] to surveil their [inmates] calls.” Perhaps, he said some might argue, at the expense of national security.
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