BEIRUT: A high-ranking security source Tuesday dismissed a report saying nearly 1,000 inmates at Lebanon’s notorious Roumieh Prison were preparing a riot to protest tougher security measures being taken against them and their families.
“The situation at Roumieh Prison is under iron-fisted control,” the source told The Daily Star. “And anyone considering rebellion or thinking of gearing up for a riot will be severely punished.”
The security source was responding to a report published Tuesday by local newspaper Al-Akhbar, which quoted families of Roumieh’s Block D prisoners as saying that the inmates were prepared to stage a riot in the coming two weeks in protest of what they consider to be unfair measures instituted at the facility.
The families strongly criticized the brief communication with inmates, which is now done by intercom once a week, following a January crackdown on the prison that ended the illicit access to mobile phones and the Internet.
They also expressed anger at the decision to prevent parents from sending food to their caged sons.
During one instance in 2013, a Lebanese police officer was arrested as he attempted to smuggle sandwiches filled with a chemical substance destined for a Fatah al-Islam prisoner in Roumieh.
Some 900 prisoners, including 300 labeled terrorists by security forces, are kept in the well-monitored cells of Roumieh’s Block D after being moved earlier this year from the facility’s poorly-maintained Block B, in a move to stop communication that was facilitating terrorism outside the prison. The unprecedented January operation was linked to twin suicide bombing in the northern city of Tripoli.
The raid on Block B came after authorities intercepted calls between the Islamist militants and members of the cell behind the Tripoli blasts that killed at least nine people and wounded more than 30.
The security source said Block B was currently under rehabilitation to make the prison system meet international standards.
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