BEIRUT, Oct 7 (AFP) - A Lebanese human
rights group called
Thursday for a World Day on October 28 for the closure of Khiam
jail, run by Israel's proxy South Lebanon Army (SLA) militia, in the
border strip occupied by the Jewish state.
"The Khiam detention camp will in future be the symbol
of human
rights abuses, it is the worst and most isolated prison in the
world," said Mohammad Safa, secretary-general of the Follow-Up
Committee for the Support of the Lebanese Detainees in Israeli
Prisons.
He said that 144 detainees, including "teenagers, students,
elderly people, journalists and farmers, were being held hostage
there without trial, some of them for 15 years already."
The committee says 14 prisoners have died under torture
in
Khiam, a former Lebanese army barracks converted into a prison by
occupying Israeli troops in 1985.
Safa addressed his appeal to "the world's human rights
organisations, to activists for human freedom and dignity and all
those struggling against torture, injustice, oppression, banishment
and forced exile."
Thursday's Mothers, a group of relatives of 17,000 Lebanese
and
Palestinians listed as missing after Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war,
also called for a hunger strike on the same day in front of the UN
offices in Beirut as a sign of solidarity with the prisoners.
They issued a statement calling on supporters who could
not join
them to send messages of protest to the United Nations Middle East
commission instead.
Khiam is run by the SLA under the guidance of Israeli
army
officers who carry out interrogations.
The jail is closed to journalists and human rights
organisations, many of which, including Amnesty International, have
repeatedly criticised conditions and the use of torture.
It was also closed to prisoners' relatives and to the
International Committee of the Red Cross until October 1995.
