The medical condition of dozens of inmates on hunger strike for 18 days inside Roumieh, Lebanon’s largest prison, has become “dire” as they protest the suspension of a general amnesty law, a legal campaigner said.
“About 400 prisoners are on a hunger strike for more than two weeks. Ambulances enter daily to take [dozens of] them away because their condition is dire,” Mohammed Sablouh, a Lebanese lawyer, told Al Jazeera.
The inmates began the strike on September 12 after Lebanon’s Constitutional Council suspended a general amnesty law that parliament had approved, and which could have secured their immediate release or reduced their sentences, Al Jazeera reported.
Prisoners in Block B of Roumieh have refused food, water and medication while awaiting a Constitutional Council ruling on the challenge to the law, Asharq Al-Awsat reported.
More than 40 inmates are said to be in critical condition, The National reported, though authorities dispute the scale of the strike.