BEIRUT: Documents recently seized from the notorious Roumieh prison have shown that Islamist inmates were planning further terrorist attacks in Lebanon, a security source told The Daily Star Tuesday.
A large number of files that were seized in an operation in Roumieh’s notorious Block B Monday revealed that several terrorist attacks across Lebanon in the past had been directed from inside the prisoners’ “operations room.”
Documents also uncovered that the attacks had been coordinated with external sides, according to the source.
Security forces stormed Block B Monday, moving all 900 Islamists to Block D, in an unprecedented nine-hour operation linked to the weekend twin suicide bombing in the northern city of Tripoli that left nine people killed and at least 30 wounded.
The source stressed that the operation’s purpose was first to separate prisoners in well-monitored cells and to end the previous chaos, where they had illicit access to mobile phones and the Internet.
Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk said Monday that security forces “have seized all phones” in a move he said aimed to “stop a process of communication that was facilitating terrorism.”
Machnouk also vowed to "cut off heads" if mobile phones were allowed to be smuggled into prisons by corrupt guards.
The security source, however, said two more cell phones were confiscated Tuesday from Block D.
The source said a wall-mounted prison jammer has been reactivated so that cellular phone users, if any, would not be able to make or receive calls.
Among Block B’s inmates, more than 300 are labeled terrorists by security forces.
Excluding Lebanese prisoners, most inmates in Block B are Syrians and Palestinians – though other Arab and non-Arab nationals are also present. The block also boasts a collection of dangerous individuals accused of belonging to militant Islamist movements such as ISIS; Al-Qaeda and its Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front; and Fatah al-Islam, among others.
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