Persona non grata

Collective Punishment 
47 
 
 
 
The men were first transported to the SLA headquarters in nearby 
Hasbaiya and then moved to Khiam prison. They said that their initial days of 
detention were spent in solitary confinement in small, windowless cells 
measuring 1.5 meters by 80 cm, the only air coming through a tiny opening with 
horizonal bars through which food was passed. Muhamed was held in solitary for 
thirty-seven days, and Khalil for twenty-eight days. During this time, they said 
that they were interrogated and tortured, pressured to confess that they were 
supplying information about the SLA to the Lebanese government.   
The brothers told Human Rights Watch that the charges were baseless. 
Muhamed said that his own movements possibly raised suspicion because he 
traveled frequently to Beirut for medical treatment.
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  But he also stressed that 
the reason that he and his brother were targeted may have been due to a dispute 
they had with the SLA. He explained that he and his brother farmed two large 
plots of land, owned by Sheba’ residents who lived in the Gulf, that yielded 
cherries, walnuts, grapes and figs. The militia took part of this land to widen the 
road between Sheba’ and Hasbaiya and cut down the trees. The brothers insisted 
that the SLA remove from the property the trees that had been cut down. “Fifteen 
days later they took us,” Muhamed told Human Rights Watch.     
Khalil Hashem was released from Khiam on October 2, 1998, because 
he was suffering from severe depression and other medical problems. His brother 
Muhamed was released on December 24, 1998, and taken directly from the prison 
to the Kfar Tebnit crossing and expelled.
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  Muhamed told Human Rights Watch:   
 
They covered my eyes with a towel, handcuffed me, and put me 
in a car.  Once we were outside the prison, they removed the 
towel.  After about twelve minutes, they told me that I was 
being expelled.   
 
                                                 
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He showed Human Rights Watch a radiology report from a Beirut hospital 
that noted “degeneration and diffuse bulging” of three discs, and other spinal 
problems. 
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Journalist David Hirst entered the occupied zone through the Kfar Tebnit 
crossing, and described it this way: “I had left the last Lebanese army post, on foot, 
about 500 meters behind.  The eery silence, the barbed wire and fortifications, the 
row of burnt-out cars, casualties of a recent artillery exchange, made this passage from 
one part of the same small country to another as striking as the border between enemy 
states.”  David Hirst, “South Lebanon.” 

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48 
Persona Non Grata: Expulsions of Civilians from Israeli-Occupied Lebanon 
 
 
 
He said that he was deposited at the crossing, and walked one and a half 
kilometers to the first Lebanese army checkpoint, where he was briefly 
questioned. He had LL30,000 (about U.S. $20) that his wife had given to him 
during her last visit to him in prison, and used the money to take a taxi    directly to 
a relative’s house near Beirut.   
The next day, at nine in the morning, four SLA militiamen arrived at 
Muhamed’s house and the nearby house of his brother Khalil to gather the 
remaining family members for expulsion.  Khalil’s wife Ibtisam Ghayad 
described the swiftness of the procedure: “They did not allow us  to take 
anything.      It was immediate. We were out of the house in five minutes.”    The 
nine children of the two families were already in school, seven of them in 
Marjayoun and two in Sheba’.    The children were collected, and then the entire 
group was transported to the Kfar Tebnit crossing. The SLA soldiers at the 
checkpoint were informed that the families were not permitted to reenter the 
occupied zone. Their permits were confiscated and torn to pieces in front of them. 
The economic impact of the imprisonment and then the expulsion on the 
two families was considerable. In addition to their two houses, furnishings and 
other personal effects, they said that other losses included about U.S. $5,000 
annually from the harvest of cherries, $4,000 from vegetables that Khalil sold in 
the coastal city of Sidon (which is located outside the occupied zone), and another 
$5,000 from olives consigned to a producer of olive oil.  Deprived of two 
breadwinners during the time that Muhamed and Khalil were detained in Khiam, 
the wives were forced to sell their jewelry and borrow heavily. Muhamed’s wife 
Rabiha, with eight children to support, sold olives and oil to generate some 
income, and borrowed LL7 million (approximately $4,600), which she said had 
not been repaid at the time of the interview.  Khalil’s wife sold the two gold 
bracelets that he had given to her when they were engaged. The women told 
Human Rights Watch that they needed money not only for daily living expenses 
but also to “purchase” access to their husbands at Khiam prison and bring them 
food and other supplies. Ibtisam said that “it was well known that you had to bring 
gifts” to obtain a visit,  noting that families who arrived empty-handed were 
turned away.    Ibtisam, describing one visit, said that she brought with her a large 
vase, about four kilograms of honey, cartons of cigarettes, yogurt, and sweets. 
The women also estimated that only about    twenty-five percent of the items that 
they brought for their husbands reached them.
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These also included milk, biscuits, Tang, Nescafe, fruits, vegetables, and 
tissues. Human Rights Watch interviews, Na’ame, Lebanon, March 1999.     

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