Prisoners Relatives Block Airport, Akkar Roads over Demands

Dozens of relatives of Islamist prisoners detained in Lebanon's notorious main prison of Roumieh on Friday blocked the international highway linking the northern city of Tripoli to neighboring Akkar and the Syrian border, demanding the government to urgently “settle the cases of their detained relatives, who have been in jail for four years without a trial.”

The protesters called for “filling the vacancies in the Judicial Council panel, to which the Fouad Saniora government had referred dozens of cases following the al-Tal and al-Bohsas bomb attacks” against army troops.

They stressed that a lot of detainees “have nothing to do whatsoever with the bomb attacks,” noting that “many of them should not be jailed for more than one or two years, in line with the verdicts issued last year by the Military Court in similar cases.”

Meanwhile, relatives of other prisoners blocked the airport highway with burning tires to protest the parliament’s recent rejection of a bill on lowering prison year to nine months.

Security forces managed later to reopen the road after dispersing the protesters, MTV reported.