Enab Baladi – Rakan al-Khadr
Roumieh Prison in Lebanon is facing a worsening humanitarian crisis, amid deteriorating services and a lack of even the most basic living conditions. Warnings are mounting of an imminent humanitarian disaster inside the prison, after several deaths linked to the widespread outbreak of tuberculosis (TB), according to a Facebook page titled “Syrian Prisoners of Conscience in Lebanon.”
On 27 December 2025, the page announced the deaths of inmates Mahmoud al-Hakim and Hamza Balbisi, and reported 20 cases showing similar symptoms, with four prisoners transferred in critical condition.
It compared the situation inside the prison to what occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, but said the current health crisis is unfolding “amid deadly overcrowding and blatant neglect.”
The page said the danger is compounded by the collective transport of inmates in closed vehicles, and their mixing through guards moving between buildings without any preventive measures.
It described the prison as a ticking health bomb, warning that any delay would mean new victims, and held the relevant authorities fully responsible.
“Torture and politicized rulings”
A Syrian detainee in Roumieh Prison, “Omar” (a pseudonym), told Enab Baladi that detainees in the prison “are subjected to the most horrific forms of torture, due to fabricated charges for acts they did not commit.”
He said Lebanon’s military court issues politicized rulings in favor of Lebanon’s Hezbollah. In Omar’s assessment, most confessions were extracted under torture.
He said the number of political prisoners of conscience in Lebanon is around 230, while the number of Lebanese detainees is 200, most of whom were arrested between 2014 and 2017, according to his estimates.
Omar added that Roumieh Prison recorded 44 deaths in 2025 as a result of medical neglect. He said 130 inmates suffer from skin diseases, in addition to 40 cases of tuberculosis and 30 people with chronic illnesses.
He said the prison lacks medicine, treatment, and all medical supplies, noting that detainees who scream from pain are transferred to solitary confinement as punishment.
“Tragic” cases and a state unable to respond
Mohammad Sablouh, director of the Cedar Centre for Legal Studies (CCLS), told Enab Baladi that Syrian detainees in Lebanon are living in tragic conditions. He said the situation was already very difficult for Syrian detainees even before Lebanon’s 2019 economic crisis, and has become worse since then.
Sablouh said the Lebanese state is unable to provide food and hospitalization requirements for prisoners. He said this helps explain the deaths of more than 44 detainees in 2025, adding that the death rate has recently reached two to three cases per week.
He said if such conditions occurred in even the world’s most underdeveloped countries, they would force the government to act. Yet Syrian detainees, alongside Lebanese detainees, continue to endure these circumstances, amid an absence of any serious intent by Lebanon’s government or lawmakers to address the prison crisis and the Syrian detainees held inside.
Sablouh noted that rights organizations are documenting these violations and ill treatment, and informing the international community to help build pressure on the Lebanese government to provide the bare minimum for a dignified life for prisoners, and to respect their rights at the very least.
Among the most prominent documentation efforts, Sablouh said, is the report “I Wish I Had Died,” produced with Amnesty International, in addition to confronting what he described as Lebanon’s “deep state” that worked with the Assad regime, using documents and records that confirm violations and torture in Lebanese prisons.
Rights groups, he said, are pursuing every possible avenue to address these tragedies, including proposing multiple legal projects in cooperation with Lebanese MPs. These included a one-time reduction of sentence by one prison year, releasing those held for 10 years without trial, and drafting a legal proposal to deport non-Lebanese detainees.
The Lebanese lawyer said all these proposals were ignored, due to a lack of interest among Lebanese officials who treat prisoners “as mere numbers to trade with the international community,” to obtain aid from the European Union and others, without spending it on detainees.
Sablouh said his rights organization is ready to take any action to pressure the Lebanese government if detainees’ families authorize them to do so.
He added that Lebanon is awaiting a comprehensive international review on 16 January, noting that the Cedar Centre has already clarified prison violations in Lebanon to the international community.
Sablouh called on the international community to ask how the Lebanese government is dealing with detainees, and to pressure it by threatening to halt international aid until Lebanon respects human beings and the prisoners inside its prisons, and stops exploiting them.
“Demonizing” detainees
Sablouh said Lebanese security agencies and the military judiciary treated opponents of the Assad regime as “terrorists,” which drove these bodies to fabricate hundreds of cases and “demonize” detainees based on their political stance.
He said Lebanon is still trying to handle the file through a judicial agreement “in an unsound way,” adding that rights organizations have demanded, since President Joseph Aoun took office, the implementation of genuine transitional justice.
According to Sablouh, the Lebanese state is required to acknowledge its past mistakes and provide redress to “wronged” detainees through a real transitional process.
He expressed surprise at the shift in Lebanese policy. Before the fall of the Assad regime, he said, Lebanon demanded the deportation of Syrian detainees, since they make up 35% of the prison population and the Lebanese government cannot feed them. He added that Lebanon deported some of them and handed them to the Assad regime, which executed them.
Sablouh accused the Lebanese government of applying double standards, saying rights organizations are asking Lebanon to provide evidence supporting its claims that Syrian detainees are accused of killing Lebanese soldiers.
The case, Sablouh said, needs two solutions: activating the judicial agreement with the Syrian state, and a legal project to address prison overcrowding for both Syrian and Lebanese detainees.
Prisoners of conscience as the main point of dispute
Lebanese journalist and political analyst Dr. Ziyad Alloush told Enab Baladi that the number of Syrian detainees in Lebanon is estimated at 2,200 to 2,600, including around 200 to 220 prisoners of conscience.
He said prisoners of conscience are the main obstacle to an agreement between Syria and Lebanon. He added that a visit by a Lebanese judicial delegation to Damascus on 10 December 2025 did not achieve the desired results in reaching a new judicial treaty that would regulate the handover mechanism for Syrian prisoners detained in Lebanon.
Alloush said there is wide divergence in how the two sides approach the draft agreement’s clauses, explaining that Syria wants to complete trials for detainees on its side, or to have convicted individuals serve their sentences on Syrian territory.
He said another point of disagreement is that the draft agreement is limited to convicted prisoners, excluding those still on trial, because handing over detainees would require a law issued by the Lebanese parliament, which is not currently possible.
According to Alloush, the most significant Syrian reservation concerns the first clause of the draft agreement, which allows the transferring state, Lebanon, to refuse to hand over any convicted person or detainee without providing justification, for reasons of its own. This would give the Lebanese state the right not to hand over any Syrian prisoner, without having to provide legal grounds.
Alloush noted another clause that is even more sensitive for Syrians, centered on Article 10, which Lebanon wanted to match the agreement signed with Pakistan.
This article, he said, stipulates that the receiving state, Syria, would not be entitled to grant an amnesty to any convicted person or detainee it receives from Lebanon. In contrast, the agreement with Pakistan does not deprive Pakistan of the right to grant amnesty to its citizens it takes back from Lebanon.
Alloush said Damascus informed the Lebanese delegation it would not seek the return of anyone proven to be involved in killing Lebanese soldiers or carrying out bombings that caused civilian deaths.
In the Lebanese political analyst’s view, Damascus considers a final resolution to the file of Syrian prisoners in Lebanon an essential entry point to sound and strong relations between the two countries, especially since most Syrians convicted or detained on terrorism related charges were among the ranks of the Syrian revolution. He said their arrest and trial in Lebanon stemmed from their political choices.
Roumieh Prison, Deadly overcrowding and blatant neglect Enab Baladi.
Hence then, the article about roumieh prison deadly overcrowding and blatant neglect was published today ( ) and is available on ُEnabbaladi ( Syria ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Roumieh Prison, Deadly overcrowding and blatant neglect )
Also on site :