In December 2025, a campaign titled “Call for Freedom” was launched as a “Popular Campaign for Freedom of Lebanese Detainees & Abductees in Israeli Prisons,” calling for the release of arbitrarily detained Lebanese held by Israel since its last full-scale war on Lebanon between September and November 2024. The campaign urges Lebanese officials and the public “not to forget or abandon our prisoners, nor to remain silent about their plight”, and began its public actions following mid-December.
At least 20 Lebanese were kidnapped and detained without legal basis; both civilians and fighters have been documented as being held in Israeli prisons since the war, with many abducted after the ceasefire agreement took effect on November 27, 2024. Despite the gravity of the issues, there has been little governmental or official attention. For example, one person was abducted from his home, another from his fishing boat in Lebanese territorial waters, and in many cases, their fate remained unknown for several days or weeks. Some were initially reported missing until released Lebanese or Palestinian prisoners later stated that they had seen them while in detention.
According to Khaled Mahajneh, the lawyer for the Detainees' and Ex-Detainees' Affairs Commission in Palestine, most Lebanese prisoners are being held in a facility in the city of Ramla, described as being “located underground, with no access to fresh air, sunlight, or anything else, and where the living conditions are extremely harsh—conditions no human could endure”. They are classified as “illegal combatants” under a 2002 Israeli law drafted by the Knesset, when Israel kidnapped Lebanese citizens, to legitimize detention without trial or clear charges, all under secret provisions that allow detention to be extended every six months.
In March 2025, Israel released five arbitrarily detained Lebanese in what it described as a “gesture to the Lebanese president,” who then stated that the release was the result of “indirect negotiations”. Other Lebanese unlawful prisoners released before March 2025 — many of whom were held for days as prisoners before release — reported being subjected to “severe beating, starvation, sleep deprivation, restricted movement, psychological torture, and sexual humiliation”.
Interrogation of Arbitrarily Detained
On Friday, 19 December 2025, the Israeli army released what it claimed was interrogation footage of Imad Amhaz, a Lebanese prisoner of war it alleged was a “senior commander in Hezbollah’s naval unit”. On the night of November 1, 2024, in northern Lebanon, an Israeli commando unit raided a chalet near the maritime academy where he was staying and abducted him. No information was released regarding his whereabouts afterward, and Israel did not allow the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to visit him.
Israel framed his illegal detention, interrogation, and the public release of the footage as part of exposing Hezbollah’s “secret maritime file,” presenting this narrative as a media and pressure campaign targeting the Lebanese government, which did not issue any official comment on the incident.
This development pushed the issue of illegal detention of Lebanese back to the forefront, particularly as Israel continues near-daily attacks on Lebanon, with strikes in the South, the Bekaa, and the southern suburbs of Beirut. Meanwhile, the situation in south Lebanon remains unclear amid continuous Israeli media discourse on the possibility of further escalations.
The issue of Lebanese detainees in Israeli prisons is not new. The current situation extends from a long history of Israeli occupation of Lebanon and the abduction of its citizens. Lebanese detainees have repeatedly been abducted without charges or trial, many under Israel’s Emergency Powers (Detention) Law of 1979, and later the 2002 law. Lebanese children were also among those abducted during the 1980s and 1990s.
Israel has consistently referred to these detainees as “bargaining chips” for political leverage. Its refusal to release the current detainees reinforces this perception, particularly as Israel seeks to pressure Lebanon into complete, direct negotiations while continuing to occupy at least five areas of Lebanese territory illegally. What follows is a historical overview of the issue of Lebanese detainees in Israeli prisons, detailing past swaps and documented practices of Israeli torture of Lebanese hostages in detention camps.
Ansar Detention Camp
Forty days after Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and its siege of Beirut, Israel established the Ansar detention camp, a date later adopted as “Day of Lebanese Detainee”. The camp was built in the southern village of Ansar, near Nabatieh and close to the Lebanese coast.
In the first two months of the invasion, Israel detained 7,400 people and placed most of them in the Ansar camp. A January 1983 Assafir article reported that 14 unlawfully detained had died under torture during the first year and several months of detention. Torture methods included beatings, the use of police dogs, urinating in hostages’ mouths, inserting a “stick inside the anus,” as well as the spread of diseases such as influenza, tooth infections, asthma, slipped discs, hemorrhoids, heart problems, and eye infections.
One year after its establishment, Israel was holding about 5,000 people from 18 countries in Ansar, half of whom were detained during the early months of the invasion. There were numerous breakout attempts and several uprisings, which were met with Israeli repression, shootings, and cases of killing and wounding hostages. An Israeli documentary under the name, “Al Ansar: The Truth Behind Israel's POW Camp in Lebanon,” later justified the detentions by citing the Fourth Geneva Convention’s recognition of “a country’s right to detain people who pose a threat to the country’s safety and its troops”.
When Israel decided to close the detention camp and demolish it during its withdrawal to the border—“to erase what had become a symbol of Israel’s troubles”—it transferred around 1,200 detainees to Atlit prison near Haifa, described as “a new $400,000 ‘escape-proof’ prison compound inside Israel.” Israel justified the transfer by arguing that “both the Geneva Convention and Israel’s emergency regulations allow an occupying power to detain and transfer persons whose freedom might endanger the occupying army”.
Khiam Detention Camp
Built in 1985—the same year Israel closed the Ansar camp—Khiam prison became the central detention site inside the Israeli-controlled “security zone” in South Lebanon. The camp, located in a border village that has been repeatedly attacked by Israel since the 2024 ceasefire agreement, operated until the liberation of the South and West Bekaa in 2000. During the 2006 war, Israel bombed the former detention camp—allegedly to destroy remaining evidence of torture—and struck its vicinity again in 2023.
The facility was run by the South Lebanon Army (SLA), a mostly Christian armed militia operating under the supervision and training of Israeli military and intelligence officers. It remained entirely off-limits to international monitors for a decade. Only in October 1995 did the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) conduct its first visit, after which it secured permission for family visits, but only for a short period.
Findings published by Amnesty International, based on testimonies from former detainees held between 1985 and 1991, confirm that Israeli intelligence officers were directly involved in interrogation and torture during the camp’s first year of operation, or the torture was conducted “in the presence of Israelis”. A 1999 Human Rights Watch (HRW) interview with a former detainee without charge for five years revealed that Israeli interrogators would call Lebanese collaborators (SLA members) and “instruct them on the type of torture to use”.
Archival documents revealed by the Israeli Shin Bet in 2022 show that hostages were imprisoned in Khiam for years without charges, and were held for indefinite periods without any legal proceedings. Ilegally abducted women, who numbered in dozens, were interrogated by men “when there was no military policewoman available”. Detainees included civilians as well as members of various Lebanese and Palestinian parties, including Amal, Hezbollah, the Communist Party, Fatah, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In contrast, others were described as belonging to “unclear” organizations.
A human rights lawyer who worked to declassify Khiam documents stated that the IDF and Shin Bet, together with the SLA, operated in Khiam “a detention and torture facility like those in the military dictatorships in Latin America”. Amnesty International documented the torture methods used at Khiam and the conditions of detention.
Electrocution was among the torture methods used. Detainees described to Amnesty how, while seated or lying on the ground, handcuffed and hooded, electrodes were attached to their fingers or other body parts, and a crank-powered apparatus produced an electric current. When used against women, electric shocks were applied to the nipples.
Other torture methods included repeated beatings with a thick electric cable, punches or kicks aimed at the testicles, suspension from an electricity pole, stripping hostages and dousing them with water, and deprivation of sleep, food, and hygiene. Hostages also described the “chicken coop,” a 50×50×70 cm cell that forced prisoners into painful positions for hours. From a personal visit to the site in 2016, I recall that some hostages lost hearing in one ear because soldiers used to strike the iron door of the coop with their boots as a form of psychological torture.
Injuries documented by Amnesty included “broken ribs and toes, hearing difficulties, back pain, severe bruising, and internal injuries.” A 1983 Assafir article listed additional torture methods used at Khiam, including severe beatings, mixing urine with drinking water, burns from cigarette butts, flogging, and striking hostages with a 2-kg iron hammer to break limbs. According to a 2009 report by the Khiam Rehabilitation Center for Victims of Torture, 16 prisoners died inside the camp or shortly after their release as a result of psychological and physical torture and illness.
Main Detainee Swaps or Releases
November 1983: Under French sponsorship, a major prisoner exchange took place in which around 4,500 Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners—as well as hostages of other nationalities—were released in exchange for six Israeli soldiers returned by the PLO–Fatah to Israel. Israel also released all hostages from the Ansar prison camp in South Lebanon, as well as from the Nabatieh and Sidon detention centers and some Israeli prisons.
June 1984: Syria carried out a prisoner exchange with Israel under the supervision of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Quneitra, which included Lebanese hostages.
May 1985: One thousand and a hundred fifty prisoners released in Quneitra, Syria, returned to Lebanon in an exchange with the Popular Front in return for three Israeli captives.
June 1985: Two hundred fifty Lebanese hostages were released from an Israeli prison in Atlit near Haifa, including members of Amal and the Lebanese National Resistance—the Popular Nasserist Organization in Sidon, according to an article published by Assafir Newspaper (1985, May 21). The hostages from Sidon, Tyre, Nabatieh, and Zahrani left behind 768 Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners remaining in Atlit.
September 1985: Israel released the last 119 hostages from Atlit, keeping three in custody, according to the same Assafir source. This concluded the aftermath of the June 14 hijacking of an American plane carrying 39 Americans who spent two weeks in Beirut. The hijackers demanded the release of 766 Lebanese prisoners in Atlit. Over the following two to three months, hostages were released in batches while 122 remained until September.
September 1991: According to the same Assafir article, fifty-one hostages were released from Khiam, and the bodies of nine Hezbollah members were returned after Israel received confirmation regarding a soldier missing since 1986, whose body was believed to be held by Hezbollah. Fourteen additional hostages were released in October of the same year, followed by 25 on 1 December 1991.
July 1996: Hezbollah handed over the bodies of two Israeli soldiers via German mediation, along with 17 members of the SLA militia, in exchange for 123 bodies of resistance fighters from Hezbollah, the Communist Party, and Lebanese and Palestinian organizations, as well as 45 hostages from Khiam.
January 2004: Hezbollah exchanged prisoners with Israel, securing the release of 400 Palestinian and 23 Lebanese hostages, along with Arab hostages and one German national, as well as the remains of 59 Lebanese citizens. This was in exchange for three Israeli soldiers captured in the Shebaa Farms in 2000.
July 2008: Hezbollah and Israel carried out a swap that secured the release of Samir Kuntar—the “dean of Arab prisoners”, later killed by Israel in Syria—along with three other Lebanese hostages from the July 2006 war, plus hundreds of Palestinian and Lebanese martyrs’ remains, in exchange for Israel recovering two soldiers captured in 2006.
Unknown Fate
The whereabouts and legal status of each of the arbitrarily detained individuals are unknown, as the Israeli authorities have not provided any official information on this matter. Their families remain unaware whether they are alive or dead, why they have been detained and where they are being held. All available information about these cases has been gathered by families and activists working on this issue, rather than through any official disclosure by the detaining authorities.
Under these conditions, the detainees must be considered victims of enforced disappearance as defined under international law, namely persons who have been arrested, detained, or abducted by a state, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of their liberty or concealment of their whereabouts. These acts were carried out extraterritorially, on Lebanese territory. This constitutes not only arbitrary and unlawful detention, but also a serious violation of Lebanese sovereignty.
Enforced disappearance is a criminal offence under international law and is prohibited under customary international law. It is also explicitly criminalised by the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, to which Israel is bound by its customary obligations. This practice is another grave breach added to Israel’s long record of unlawful detention, cross-border abduction and systematic impunity.