Beirut, Lebanon Raging over a massive explosion in Beirut last week, tens of thousands of Protestants took to the streets of the capital on Saturday to account for responsibility and the downfall of the country’s ruling class.
A large number of Protestants throw stones and other projectiles. They sat against tear gas, rubber bullets, and bird shots fired from shotguns.
Through analysis of videos and images of the security response by the army and men on the day in plain clothes, and examination of medical documents and interviews with doctors treating the injured, Al Jazeera determined that security forces violated international standards about the use of force.
The United Nations has established basic principles for the use of force that state that all other non-coercive means must be exhausted first and that security forces must “exercise restraint” and “minimize damage and injury”.
Courts are not allowed to use firearms against people “except in self-defense or defense of others against the grave threat of death or serious injury”, or “to prevent the crime of a particularly serious crime involving serious threat to life is, “and related situations.
But open source evidence shows that these criteria were probably not met on Saturday.
Shots fired from a distance
Saturday’s protest took place in Martyr’s Square, a long rectangular extension in downtown Beirut that houses the Mohammad al-Amin Mosque, the tomb of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and a building complex on the east side , marked on the map below.
Protesters hurled rocks at security forces from areas marked with green arrows. Hundreds did so from the area marked “Tomb”, but were unable to approach security forces across the highway in front of them due to the difficult, almost unchanged terrain.
On the other hand, soldiers and men in plain clothes fired a number of different weapons at Protestants.
Video showed protesters throwing stones at security forces who were at a distance of about 40 meters (131 feet) across the terrain that they could not cross.
| [Source: Timour Azhari/Al Jazeera] |
Stills from the video show the location of the security forces on the other side of the field [Timour Azhari/Al Jazeera]
Below are four examples of shootings that took place during the August 8 demonstration, based on videos and images posted online or recorded by Al Jazeera on site.
Man shooting handgun
| [Source: Video shared on Twitter] |
Stills shows the location of this shooter, standing in full view of uniformed security force [Al Jazeera]
Man shooting silver gun
| [Source: Timour Azhari/Al Jazeera] |
In the same video, another man with a hood and shotgun appears briefly [Timour Azhari/Al Jazeera]
Soldier shooting gun
| [Source: Timour Azhari/Al Jazeera] |
The soldier’s position is only a few meters away from men in plain clothes who shot at Protestants [Timour Azhari/Al Jazeera]
Placed on the map below, the four shootings happened close to each other, with the orange lines indicating the approximate distance between security forces and the closest Protestants.
This shows that armed men in civilian clothes and a soldier shot at Protestants at a minimum distance of 40-50 meters (131-164 feet), which raised serious doubts about the question of whether it was a legitimate force of violence under UN guidelines.
Richard Weir, a crisis and conflict researcher at Human Rights Watch, told Al Jazeera that HRW on Saturday investigated the response by security forces.
He said the great distance between Protestants and security forces “reduces the chance that the use of force was necessary, that it was legally exploited”.
Asked about the use of a handgun and bird shot, Weir said: “Nothing I saw on Saturday suggests that potentially deadly force would have been deterred by security forces.”
Who was shooting?
The Internal Security Forces (ISF) denied in a statement that they fired all the rubber bullets at Protestants, saying that a man who appeared in a video that shot live fire was not a member of the force.
The army also said they did not use live fire, although they did not refuse to use rubber bullets.
Doctors and ISF spokespersons could not be reached for comment on who the men were in plain clothes.
Except for the Army and the ISF, parliamentary police are stationed in that area. They are under the direct authority of Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, and have been documented by Protestant attacks on several occasions in the past.
A spokesman for General Adnan Sheikh Ali, the head of parliament’s police, said he had refused to comment on the matter.
Obstacles to medical evidence
Use of force is, for good reason, placed under serious restrictions – it often leads to exacerbation of injuries and death.
At least 728 people were injured during Saturday’s protest, including many who sustained head, neck and chest injuries. Wounds were consistent with both rubber bullets and bird shots.
Al Jazeera verified several images of injuries during the protest on Saturday, showing what appeared to be bird shot wounds, and a rubber bullet wound [Photo courtesy: Human Rights Watch]
Two doctors treating Protestants wounded with bird shots told Al Jazeera that they had seen wounds that were consistent with both close range and long range fire.
Fred Bteich, a surgeon at Beirut’s Hotel Dieu Hospital, operated on a man who was shot at a maximum distance of 15 meters (49 feet).
He said one of the pellets had entered the right side of the 33-year-old man’s heart, missing a large artery 1 cm (0.4 inches) wide. “If it hit that he would have died on the spot,” Bteich said.
Because of the pellet’s sensitive location, surgeons could not remove it from the man’s heart. This has the potential to cause complications in the future, Bteich said.
“We can not afford to change a lot of position because it would be catastrophic at heart,” he said.
The same man was also hit by a rubber bullet that shot at close range, which lodged in his body and had to be surgically removed.
Both Bteich and Dr Ghassan Chakhtoura, a gastrointestinal surgeon at Hotel Dieu, said four or five patients were treated for bird shot injuries in that one hospital alone.
Chaktoura said the treatment involved a 22-year-old man and a 55-year-old woman. The first had several pellets emptied into his body, with one piercing his spleen, kidney and sheath near his back. His condition was stable.
However, the woman was shot in the stomach and pancreas and was in an unstable condition, which required emergency surgery.
One patient was admitted with at least 50 pellets spread across his body.
At least 50 metal pellets were spread over the body of this patient who was admitted to Hotel Dieu Hospital [Ghassan Chakhtoura/Twitter/Al Jazeera]
Chakhtoura said his colleague Dr Elie Saliba was shot in the head during Saturday’s protests after working long shifts to rescue victims of the Beirut explosion.
A metal pellet lay near the back of Dr. Elie Saliba’s head [Courtesy: Fred Bteich/Al Jazeera]
Chakhtoura also notes that a number of people came in with more superficial wounds, similar to bird shots fired at a further distance.
Bteich and Chakhtoura spoke of a number of other cases at hospitals in the area. They said it was the first time they had seen protesters brought in with bird shot wounds despite their work in the hospital since a massive protest movement began in October.
“It is completely unacceptable for Lebanese security forces – whether the Lebanese army, the internal security forces or the police of parliament – to use bird shots against Protestants,” Weir said.
“It’s not designed for that in any way, shape or form. It’s designed for sports, shooting clay doors and killing small animals,” he said.
“It is not designed to be used for crowd control and it poses a serious risk of injury or death, as Human Rights Watch has documented in the past.”
.
