(Zaman Al Wasl)- Syrian refugees' defender and Human Rights advocate Tariq Shandab filed a complaint with the Special Public Prosecutor against the Lebanese judicial police, which handed over four Syrian refugees in Lebanon last week.
Lawyer Shandab requested investigations for the persons who facilitated the extradition of the Syrian refugees.
“This case is actually a crime punishable by Lebanese law, international law and the four Geneva Conventions,” he said, adding that It’s a criminal act, especially as these four refugees will be killed or tortured.
Lebanon's General Security Directorate has been always denying it forced any Syrian to sign any form.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) and four other groups said in May that staff at Lebanon's General Security Directorate deported at least 16 Syrians after forcing them to sign "voluntarily repatriation forms".
One of the deportees said that the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR was not notified that he was being deported, and when it did hear of the expulsion, was not able to stop it.
The process of handing over the Syrian refugees, in secret and in public, is sometimes due to pressures exerted by the Syrian regime and its allies inside Lebanon, Shandab says.
The complaint included charges against the security apparatus and all those who contributed in this crime since Lebanon has signed Refugee’s conventions.
Many attempts to blur this case, according to the prominent lawyer. He called on the Lebanese judiciary to investigate with any person who participated in the process and arrest him, because it arranges serious responsibilities for the Lebanese government.
“Lebanon should not be left as a yard for militias and those who serve Bashar al-Assad, so let law to prevail,” he said.
Lebanon has hosted more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees, a significant burden for a country of some 4.5 million people since the Syrian civil war's outbreak in 2011.
While fighting has slowed or ended in many areas of Syria, the UN has stressed that all returns should be voluntary.
The rights groups say some 74 percent of Syrians in Lebanon lack legal residency and are at risk of detention.
The Universal Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol that called for the protection of all refugees in all the countries that turn to it under compelling or exceptional circumstances and to provide a safe place for them.
Zaman Al Wasl
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