Leniency for collaborators will stir up old hostility, warns Hizbullah

Hizbullah’s politburo chief Mohammed Raad warned on Wednesday that leniency for the "Israeli"-allied militiamen currently on trial was tantamount to legalizing treason.
Raad’s comments came on the second day of trials of the militiamen, as 22 men received sentences of up to two years, including a stipulation that they remain outside their native qadas for up to five years.
Raad, speaking at a ceremony in Khalde, also cautioned against freeing any collaborators who would just be tracked down and assaulted by others in their villages.
“If we don’t penalize the criminal, we will be legalizing the ideology of treason,” said the Nabatieh MP, a member of Hizbullah’s eight-man parliamentary bloc. “Clemency for these people will spark a civil and social crisis in many of the liberated villages, which suffered much at the hands of these collaborators,” he added.
The remarks came amid a dispute between Hizbullah and the judiciary over the conduct of the collaborators trials, which the party believes are being carried out too swiftly and leniently.
“We’re only thinking of the public good when we demand that they be penalized,” Raad said, warning that any militiaman who was set free would be an outcast in his hometown, and be hunted down, stirring up sectarian trouble.
“We won’t be pleased if a collaborator is set free by the court. He’ll become an outcast … This will have repercussions with a beginning but no end,” he said.
At the Military Court on Wednesday, 23 men were sentenced to prison terms with hard labor ranging between one and two years, except for one man, who will serve five years. Fines of LL200,000 to LL400,000 were also imposed.
After serving their sentences, the convicted men will be banned from visiting the qadas where they come from for periods ranging between one and five years, a measure taken for the first time since the trials began on Monday. Charges were dropped against one suspect because they fell outside the statute of limitations.
On Monday, the court tried and sentenced 77 defendants. Forty-eight of them received one-year prison sentences. The heaviest sentence, five years, was given to one man.
The sentences were regarded as too lenient by Hizbullah.
Also on Wednesday, Elizabeth Hodgkin, the Middle East representative for Amnesty International, discussed legal aspects of the "Israeli" agents trials with State Prosecutor Adnan Addoum.
She also handed him a report by the London-based human-rights group, which held "Israel" and the militia responsible for “war crimes” committed in the notorious Khiam prison, which was run by the militiamen during ""Israel's" occupation.
Addoum told reporters that he had explained to Hodgkin the legal procedure applied in the collaborators cases.
“I said the judiciary is considering each case individually and is discriminating between those who opted to betray their country and those who were forced to do so,” he explained.
Hodgkin said that “all those responsible for the crimes committed at Khiam should be prosecuted, both the jailers and their masters.”
She denounced the “grave breaches of the obligations of the occupying force as defined by the Geneva Conventions,” which regulate the behavior of armies during wars.
Hodgkin noted that the "Israeli" Supreme Court had actually asked the "Israeli" government on May 17 to “decide the fate of the 145 civilians detained in Khiam before its withdrawal from southern Lebanon.”

The Daily Star, 8-6-2000.