Farfahinne

In 1990 a new agreement (Taef) ended the Lebanese civil war. With it, 15 years were cut from the Lebanese history. The Taef agreement discharged the Lebanese militia leaders from their responsibilities and fixed them in ruling positions. The authority liberated itself from the weight of the past and granted itself an amnesty law. Since that time, the civil society mobilized its resources and personals In order to proclaim three main demands:

1- First is to announce the Truth and to point the responsibilities of the war crimes during the Lebanese civil war.

2- Second is to push those who are responsible, to confess their responsibility, to give the right reparations for the victims and to declare the destiny of the missing and the kidnapped people.

3- Third is to realize the true reconciliation so that war doesn’t return anymore.

For several years the response of the government to the demands of the families' committee was to say that "all the disappeared were killed so there’s no need to search for them." The families were accused of exhuming the memory of the war that “the Lebanese want to forget” and of awakening the sensibilities of the war. As for the judiciary, its ignorance for the lawsuits against war criminals is remarkable. The first complaint was presented against the kidnappers of Mohieddine Hachicho, a school teacher "disappeared" (kidnapped) by right wing militias in 1982. Since 1991, the courts have been looking into the case and postponing it even though there are witnesses that saw Hachicho being kidnapped and followed the kidnappers to the military base where they kept him.

The latest complaint was presented by former prisoners in Israeli jails against the leader of the Lebanese Forces, a right wing militia, Samir Gaegae. Lebanese courts refused to look into the complaint under the pretext of the amnesty given to Gaegae in 2005.

The amnesty law remains an obstacle for the complete announcement of the Truth. In fact, this law has been criticized by most Human Rights organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch who consider that war crimes and crimes against humanity -such as the massacres and killings based on identity cards perpetrated by the Lebanese warlords who are currently in government- cannot be covered by amnesty.

click on the pic bellow to read (in arabic) the memo addressed to the President .