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| Nicholas Blanford: Monitor correspondent in Lebanon. Courtesy of the writer |
Our reporter's night in a Lebanese jail
After a run-in with Hizbullah militants, Monitor correspondent Nicholas Blanford finds himself in a Lebanese military jail.
from the August 1, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
After they stopped us on our way out of Yahfoufa, the Hizbullah men told us to follow them.
We ended up at a nearby house in Yahfoufa where we were offered cups of Turkish coffee. Soon, more Hizbullah men arrived and we were escorted to an office in the village of Nabi Sheet. Ali and I handed over our cellphones, wallets, and my small backpack of journalistic gear for their perusal. That didn't help the situation.
In the eyes of our captors, my GPS device and a satellite phone – intended to aid our trip to remote Toufeil – only marked us as spies. Still, I was not unduly worried. I had been detained by Hizbullah before. It usually meant sitting with them for two or three hours while they verified my identity. I reeled off a list of names of top Hizbullah officials whom they could contact.
However, the Hizbullah men of the Bekaa are a tough, suspicious breed and unused to foreigners tramping around their areas.
Furthermore, Hizbullah has grown more wary of foreign journalists since the recent revelation that two Israeli correspondents had entered Lebanon on foreign passports and reported from the party's strongholds in Beirut and the south, an act that has made life more difficult and potentially dangerous for Western journalists operating here.
The Hizbullah men made no move to contact the officials in Beirut. They served us strong, sweet tea in tiny glasses, "to help you stay awake," one of them joked. Then another asked politely if we minded being handed over to the Lebanese Army. We said that was fine, but my heart sank. It meant entering a whole nightmare of slow-paced bureaucracy.
We were bundled up in two separate vehicles. Each sped through Nabi Sheet's narrow streets and out into the open countryside. Military intelligence was awaiting our arrival beside a house. They drove us across the Bekaa to the Ablah military barracks.
For the next eight hours we were grilled repeatedly. Who were we? Where had we been? A stocky, shaven-headed officer meticulously wrote down our answers.
Another agent asked that I scroll through the pictures I had taken that morning in Yahfoufa on my digital camera.
And there, on the screen, was the shot of me firing an automatic pistol. I froze. I had forgotten to delete the photo we took two weeks earlier shooting the watermelon.
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