General Amnesty: The Decline of Judiciary, Politics, and Ethics!

Rather than becoming an occasion to open a serious debate on the foundations of the judicial system, justice, and punishment in Lebanon, the political and legal discussion around the proposed general amnesty law has turned into a sectarian and confessional contest, entirely removed from the basic principles underpinning the anticipated legislation, namely achieving justice, redressing the wrongs suffered by detainees who have been denied for years their natural right to timely trials, and addressing, of course, the issue of prison overcrowding, which violates the bare minimum of human rights even in the case of a prisoner or a pre-trial detainee, thereby contradicting the very reformative idea of detention and converting prisons into spaces that entrench criminality and abuse.

As at every political or legislative juncture, confessional and sectarian groups have rushed to fight over the demands on the table, each seeking to claim the largest share for its own community with the aim of entrenching confessional influence and ensuring its perpetuation, to the point where the mere idea of breaking free from it becomes a matter of extreme complexity and difficulty, thereby deepening sectarian divisions across the country and obstructing any reform process that, in any case, rarely succeeds.

The moment the debate around a general amnesty law breaks down along confessional lines in its treatment of the various files (one community calling for the release of Islamist detainees, another seeking to address the drug cultivation that flourishes in the Bekaa mohafazat, and others demanding the return of those expelled to Israel in 2000), this reveals the profound pathological state of Lebanon’s political society and the absence of any genuine desire to bring about the slightest change capable of disrupting the existing structure.

And yet, the very fact of contemplating the adoption of a general amnesty law, one that comes not in the wake of a civil war or bloody conflict as was the case in 1991, should prompt a multitude of questions relating fundamentally to the nature of the Lebanese judicial system and its multiple challenges, bound up with how it operates and with the mechanisms of oversight and accountability, given the chronic delays in adjudicating judicial files that in hundreds of cases exceed, as they often do, the maximum sentences the charges would carry, constituting a severe and unprecedented injustice against the detainees. Who will give back the lost years, squandered away for them?

If the mechanisms of judicial work are near-paralyzed, whether in the handing down of verdicts, their cassation appeal, the resolution of pending claims, or the inspection and accountability of negligent, corrupt, and derelict judges, an urgent question then presents itself to the presidency and the government, namely how to set the wheels of judicial reform in motion, starting with how to make the judiciary a genuinely independent authority, free from political interventions and influences in its transfers, promotions, and appointments, which transform it into an arena of struggle and power-sharing, to the detriment of the very essence of the judicial idea and its independence.

Among the many important commitments the President of the Republic, General Joseph Aoun, has put forward in his inauguration speech and in his subsequent political positions, judicial reform figures prominently, and he has expressed his conviction in this regard on numerous occasions when addressing the judicial body. This position converges with similar, if not identical, views held by Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, who occupied one of the highest international judicial posts before assuming the Lebanese premiership, as an international judge whose writings on justice, politics, and reform are extensive.

Certainly, the Israeli war has upended all balances and reconfigured priorities in a manner radically different from what was expected, and certainly Lebanon — its South in particular — has become a disaster zone in every sense of the word, with the priority remaining the cessation of hostilities, the Israeli military withdrawal, and reconstruction; and yet it is equally true that progress on many internal files is both possible and within reach, and it would be even more accurate to say that it will never again be as smooth and accessible as it is with these two presidents specifically in office.

In this regard, it is imperative that the debate around the general amnesty law transform into a debate on the means of revitalizing judicial inspection and activating accountability mechanisms within the judiciary, as a prelude to the more fundamental question concerning the nature of the relationship between political power and the judiciary, and the paths toward a genuine “liberation” of the courts and the judges from the political stranglehold that domesticates the judiciary and drains it of its substance, its role, and its mission.

In this incandescent regional moment, one bearing transformations that would have been difficult to imagine only a few years ago, while Lebanon loses one by one the distinctive qualities that once set it apart, to the benefit of other rising nations, it is no longer possible to continue going in circles: wars, divisions, corruption, and decay.