Al-Khiam prison was destroyed in 2006, and the cells, columns and screams of the prisoners were immortalized in television and individual visual archives. It was necessary to rely on the documentation of this place, its symbolism and what removed it from the scene of the Israeli conquest, to recreate television documentary material that preserves the past, present and even the future and provide a new generation document the history of their country and introduced it to the brutality of work education. This is exactly what editor Shiraz Hayek did in the documentary series We Didn’t Leave Them (directed by Amir Mahdi, producer of Al Mayadeen), which is a four -part documentary documenting the two stages between the Ansar and Khiam Detainees. .
The name of the series was inspired by the speeches of the leaders of the resistance, the most famous of which was the phrase of Hezbollah Secretary General Syed Hassan Nasrallah: “We are a people who do not leave their prisoners in prisons.” He takes us into the eighties and their historical context, giving two parts to each of the prisoners. The first part, entitled “Ansar 1”, highlights the stage of the creation of the “Ansar Detention Center” in 1982, after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and the events associated with it, which became the crux of the resistance, and its. initially, as Hayek tells us, the documentary aims to convey all the resistance that emerged at that time from the “communist” parties, “Syrian social nationalists”, the Amal Movement and Palestinian factions, in a historical context. , in addition to uniting their leaders, led by Sheikh Rageb Harb, Muhammad Saad and Khalil Jaradi. The military resistance coincided with the emergence of public resistance shortly after the invasion, perhaps the most notable of which was the “Nabatiye Uprising” (1983), documented in the film. At this time, people arrested Malala Yisraeli. The first two parts (Ansar 1 and 2) document the period that lasted from 1982 to 1985, after the closure of the “Ansar detention center” and the removal of the occupation army from some areas in the south and the establishment of the so – called “boundary line”. strip ”.
In two parts, a historical narrative of the captivity period, its military and logistical context, and the connection between past and present through interviews with former prisoners who re -emerged in this area to recreate the history of that time through its bitterness, individual and collective struggle. Perhaps the most notable here is the so-called “great escape”, which failed the first time, but succeeded the second time, from which about 70 prisoners escaped. Here, one of the escaped prisoners and witnesses of that operation at the time, Samir Khafaja, as well as Hezbollah leader Muhammad Fneish, the former Ansar prisoner and the leader of the Amal Movement Khalil Hamdan, the processions noon. era, appear on tape. While the Ansar is a male-only prison, women have a role to play by hosting former captive Khadija Haraz with the same touching story. He was arrested along with his wife and exiled to Palestine, while his wife remained in Ansara. The historical narrative stage, and following eyewitnesses, encountered the technical difficulty shown in processing the rare archival materials of the Ansar Detention Center, as Hayek tells us about the time taken to process the archival imagery and replace some of the narrative stages with modern techniques, such as “animation”, as happened in the “Great Escape” process, implemented using 3D technologies. The Ansar period ended with its closure and the transfer of its captives to occupied Palestine or “Khiam”, the first place of arrest and investigation in the Israeli occupation before, in 1984, the most prominent witness to the crimes. of conquest against mankind.
In the last two parts (Khiyam 1 and 2) we proceed to “Khiyam” through an overview of history, discussing its origins as a French military barracks founded in 1933, and then returning to years forming the period of torture, repression and planned murder of prisoners, and what the Israelite was trying to do From the utter destruction of his habits. However, a large archive of his dungeons and cells remained witnesses to all these crimes. Also in the last two episodes, the series sought to connect the past with the present, inspiring the testimonies of prisoners, who were previously present in the prison’s archival footage before its destruction, in the process of reuniting twice. What is remarkable here is the appearance of one of the inmates in the prison called “Tanios” to discuss the methods of torture and their development, and the horrors that were going on at that time against the prisoner. Because “Khiam” at the time included space for women, the recording also features the unimaginable torture they suffered, as former captive Nawal Baidun appears here to narrate the stages of torture and disease without discrimination between men and women, and about women who have had abortions in prison, or even been trapped with their babies. Elderly captives also had their share in the work, as they died after their bodies could not withstand the cruelty of torture, in addition to those missing, whose bodies were hidden after death, and their families do not know where they are buried.
Former prisoners are recreating the history of that time with its bitterness, individual and collective struggle.
As in the case of the “Ansar” part, as well as in “Khiam”, the organizers of the series aim to connect the past era with the current one, evoking the memory of prisoner Riyad Kalakesh and his son, who formerly appeared. on tape before the destruction of the detainee, and now they return to tape, after the destruction, to bypass the prison as before, with differences in time and geographical features of the place. Al-Khiam prison, and the symbolism of the resistance it represents, is a testament to the brutality of the Israeli occupying army, and must be attributed to the number of martyrs who died there and to the force majeure that accompanied that period, namely that is new. the introduction of the Red Cross prison in 1995… As well as the contexts of Historicity, which manifested itself in the increasing speed of resistance operations and the beginning of the exchange of prisoners, until the “release” in 2000, the destruction to the locks of the tents of their cells and recording their first screams 22 years ago, and the visit of Syed Hasan Nasrallah to the jail. In other words, the series documents the period from 1978 to 2000 in four stages highlighting two stages defining modern Lebanese history. Documentation that Hayek took and classified as a “moral and professional responsibility” in an attempt to preserve the collective memory and introduce to present and future generations his history and the struggles of his people.
* “We didn’t leave them”: Every Sunday at 21:00 on the Al-Mayadeen screen.
Source: Al-Akhbar
