Riad’s story: 14 years of horror and pain in Khiam hellhole 
Nicholas Blanford 
Daily Star staff
31 May 2000 

The soft unassuming tones of Riad Kalakish contrast with his chilling tale of how Israeli
officials at Khiam prison ordered the SLA guards to gas rebelling prisoners in their cells,
killing two inmates. 
When the detainees were gassed in 1989, Riad was three years into his imprisonment. The
polite, neatly dressed 33-year-old was to spend a further 11 years locked up before his
release last week along with the remaining detainees when the prison was stormed by hundreds
of Khiam people. 
During his 14 years in detention, Riad said he was repeatedly beaten, drenched in hot and
cold water, tortured with electrical wires attached to his earlobes and genitals, starved
and even sodomized with a wooden baton. The SLA guards carried out the brutal torture under
orders from Israeli security personnel, members of the General Security Service (GSS), who
ran the interrogations. 
The appalling conditions under which the inmates were forced to live sparked three days of
rioting in 1989. Riad said that acting on the instructions of their Israeli superiors, the
guards flung gas canisters into the dank confines of the cell blocks to subdue the rioters. 
"Everyone began screaming as the gas reached them, then there was a hush," Riad said. He
added that the detainees began to shake uncontrollably as the gas took effect. 
The sudden silence from the cells apparently panicked the guards outside the blocks. They
smashed the windows to allow the gas to escape. 
Two detainees choked to death. Their bodies were taken to Marjayoun hospital along with 12
inmates requiring treatment from the effects of the gas. 
Riad said that Ahmad Fakhoury, who was the military head of the jail, told the prisoners
that those harmed by the gas were suffering from allergies. 
"Fakhoury told us that there was very little gas in the canisters. We told him that they had
killed two of us and wanted to kill us all. Fakhoury denied this and said the two men were
being treated in hospital." 
The prisoners taken to Marjayoun hospital actually overheard the SLA guards blaming the
doctors for the two deaths. 
Riad’s ordeal began in 1986 when he was snatched from the village of Shaqra while visiting
his grandfather. The 19-year-old was not a member of Hizbullah although his two brothers
were resistance fighters. 
He was taken to Khiam in the trunk of a car and was interrogated and tortured for two months
"They began by repeatedly jabbing a screwdriver into my neck, kicking me in the shins and
punching me in the chest. Several ribs were broken," Riad said. 
The interrogators questioned him about his association with Hizbullah and whether he knew of
any members of the resistance living in the Shiite village of Dibbine just north of
Marjayoun in the occupation zone. 
Riad was given no food or water and would be shaken awake if he fell asleep. 
"Assad Sayed from Qlaya was the worst torturer," he said. "If he wanted to hit you, he would
do it as hard as possible. He left the SLA in 1992 and now lives in Sweden." 
The interrogations were conducted by Israeli GSS agents. Israel has always denied
responsibility for the running of Khiam prison, arguing that the militia it trained, armed
and paid had sole jurisdiction. 
"The Israelis did the questioning, the SLA did the hitting," Riad said. He could remember
the codenames of some of his Israeli interrogators: Abu Dib, Jackie, Abu Nabil and Elie. The
Israeli GSS traditionally adopt Arab nicknames. 
Sometimes a cotton bag was pulled over his head during interrogations. But Riad knew
Israelis were present in the room from the Hebrew being spoken among themselves and the
accented Arabic in which they addressed him. 
"Elie was the worst Israeli. A giant over 2 meters tall, he used to grab me, throw me
against a wall and hit me," Riad said. 
He said that some prisoners, including himself, were sodomized with wooden batons. 
He was tortured for three days with electricity. Wires were attached to his ear lobes and
the tip of his penis. Shocks were delivered every 15 minutes using an old field telephone. 
"They’d wind the handle and it would send painful jolts through my body," Riad said. "The
pain was so intense I began bleeding from my penis." 
He was confined to a room barely 1 meter square, wrists bound and tied to his ankles. He
spent 15 days enduring the stifling heat of the cell. 
The conditions the prisoners endured were pitiful. Each cell contained four detainees who
were forced to sleep on the filthy cement floor, their shoes served as pillows. The toilet
was a bucket that was only emptied every two days. 
They were allowed a brief shower once every fortnight and exercise periods lasted around 10
minutes a week in an open-air courtyard. 
To break the monotony, the prisoners would make home-made ink by soaking processed cheese
wrappers in cups of water. They used the red ink to write verses from the Koran which they
would then read to each other, attempting to draw comfort from the words. 
In 1995, the International Committee for the Red Cross visited the prison. Conditions
improved considerably. Showers, beds and sinks were fitted into all the cells and relatives
were allowed to visit. 
As the deadline for Israel’s withdrawal approached, the SLA began treating the detainees a
little better. 
"They were scared of what we would do to them after the Israelis had gone," Riad said. 
The dramatic storming of the prison last week in which all the detainees were released came
as a total surprise. 
"Looking through my cell window I could see the guards gathering in the center of the prison"
he recalled. "In the distance we could hear chants of ‘Allahu Akbar.’ The chants grew
louder and louder." 
When the crowd reached the jail, they told the guards inside to open the gate or it would be
broken in. 
"The guards fired shots in the air and the crowd began chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ again. Then
we answered their cries with chants of our own." 
The SLA asked to be allowed to leave the prison in peace. "The SLA left, holding their guns
but hysterical with fear," Riad said. The crowd surged into the prison blocks and smashed
open the cells. 
"It was only when we were outside that I understood that we were really free. I felt as
though I had been born again." 
For someone who has endured and survived such terrible treatment over such a long period of
time, Riad harbors little resentment for his torturers. 
If he met the Israeli interrogator Elie again, Riad said, "I would forgive him." 
"What happened to me is in the past. If Elie and the others want to become better people
and stop doing these wicked things then God will help them. God will judge Elie, not me." 
 

DS 31/05/00

‘Khiam cost me my baby’ 
Reem Haddad 
Daily Star staff
31 May 2000 

The hardest moment of Mona Ashour’s life was when she had to tell her husband Adel that she
couldn’t present him with his child because the beatings she suffered at the hands of her
SLA captors caused her to miscarry. 
In 1993 ­ just two days after Adel was imprisoned ­ the SLA snatched her from her home in
the then-occupied village of Dibbine and took her to the Khiam detention center. Her
brother-in-law, Riad Kalakish, had already been inside Khiam for seven years. Both Adel and
Riad remained detainees until last week’s storming of the prison. 
Mona was two-and-a-half months pregnant with their first child. The first insults were the
forced removal of her veil and the fondling of her body. 
At first the harassment was psychological. "They threatened to remove my clothes and hang me
outside in front of all the men," Mona recalled. "Then they said they’d rape me while my
husband watched." 
Terrified, she answered their questions. "My husband was a Hizbullah fighter and I told them
what I knew," she said. "But he never told me anything so there was nothing much I could
tell." 
The SLA interrogator was obviously not convinced. So for a whole day, Ashour was made to
kneel with her hands tied behind her back facing a toilet. There she stayed and was forced
to watch as militiamen relieved themselves. 
"And on the way in and out, they threw either cold or hot water on me," she said. 
Meanwhile, she was deprived of sleep as interrogations continued. "The interrogator slept
but I wasn’t allowed to," she recalled. "I had to sit there watching him sleep, then wait
for him to wake up and sip his coffee ever so slowly." 
Taking a break from questions, the interrogator would then masturbate in front of her. 
"I kept thinking to myself," she said, "that I was a married woman. What about the young
girls who came through here?" 
Then the physical harassment began. Slaps and beatings became the norm. 
She lost her baby around the third day after an SLA woman ordered her to clean some rooms
and carry heavy items. Already dizzy from the beatings, Mona miscarried and fell unconscious
 She was taken to Marjayoun Hospital. 
Back in prison, she was placed in a small cell with four others. The women quickly bonded.
Once a week, they received a bucket of water to wash themselves and their clothes. "We had
a system going among us that whoever was menstruating would get all the water," she said.

They cut up their blankets to use as sanitary napkins ­ though these were later provided.
"We always looked out for each other," she said. "We found ways to cling together." 
When one of the women from nearby cells was taken away for interrogation ­ frequently during
the night ­ the woman would find some way to signal to the others that she was being taken
away. 
"For example, she’d cough as she’d go by our door and we knew who it was" Mona said. 
And then they listened intently. If they heard her screaming they would scream back. 
'One time a woman was taken to another room," she said. "And there, a militiaman stripped
her clothes off and his as well. Then he tried to rape her. She was strong and pushed him
off. And she screamed loudly. We heard her and screamed back. This somehow scared the
militiaman and he let her go." 
With Adel’ return, these memories are now behind her. It’s time to settle down to a new life
 ­ one in which children will hopefully play a part. 


DS 31/05/00