Trump Thanks Lebanon after Fakhoury Returns to U.S.

U.S. President Donald Trump has confirmed that former Khiyam Prison warden Amer Fakhoury was released Thursday to the United States, where he is a naturalized citizen.

Trump said that Fakhoury, a former member of the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army militia who was detained on his return to Beirut in September, was suffering late-stage cancer. He added that Fakhoury “will now be able to receive the much needed care and treatment in the United States."

"We've been working very hard to get him freed. He's finally able to have his entire family at his side," Trump told reporters at the start of a daily news conference on the coronavirus pandemic.

"The United States has no higher priority than the safety and well-being of our citizens," he said.

"I'm very grateful to the Lebanese government. They worked with us," Trump added.

After his arrest, a Lebanese security source said Fakhoury had already been sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison for collaborating with Israel.

He served as a senior warden in the notorious Khiyam prison, which was opened in 1984 by the SLA after Israel occupied southern Lebanon in what it called a security zone.

Former inmates accuse Fakhoury of ordering the torture of thousands of detainees held there before Israeli forces withdrew from the area in 2000, ending their 22-year occupation of south Lebanon.

"Not a single person held in Khiyam was spared physical and psychological torture," Abbas Qabalan, who was detained there from 1987 to 1988, said as he took part in a demonstration last year in Beirut.

He accused Fakhoury both of ordering and personally taking part in beatings of inmates.

But a senior U.S. official cast doubt on Fakhoury's involvement and suggested the allegations were put forward for political reasons.

"There have been many dozens of Lebanese affiliated with Khiam Prison who have been convicted of torture and other crimes. Fakhoury's name has never been mentioned in any of those allegations and he was never charged for that," David Schenker, the assistant secretary of state for the Near East, told reporters.

He said that the State Department spoke to Fakhoury's lawyers, who challenged the credibility of five witnesses, saying three had been in Israeli rather than SLA custody.

"This was a political football from day one and has been manipulated, I think, for political purposes in Lebanon, even trying to leverage it for some sort of prisoner exchange," Schenker said.

Hilal Salman, another former inmate, blamed Fakhoury for his brother's death.

"My brother was killed there in 1989 because of a gas bomb thrown at inmates on the orders of two prison heads, including Amer al-Fakhoury," he said.

Schenker said that the U.S. government was bringing back Fakhoury on a medivac and that he would undergo hospital care on his return for lymphoma.

He said the situation had become increasingly urgent due to coronavirus.

The United States has a complicated relationship with Lebanon, where 241 U.S. troops were killed in a 1983 truck bombing during the country's sectarian civil war and Israel's occupation of Lebanon.

Last year, the Trump administration held up $100 million in military assistance to Lebanon for months as it sought to curb the influence of Hizbullah, the Iranian-allied armed group and political party.