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Inmates describe their interrogation, which usually lasts between 20 and 35 days, as the most difficult experience of their life. Yet they seem curiously unbowed. Says Hassan Mohammed Nasser, who describes himself as an active member of a radical fundamentalist faction called Believers Resistance: "I was beaten from time to time, but that was not hard for me." He has been imprisoned for 19 months, but says he was not tortured or humiliated.
The interrogators contend that violence and force are largely ineffective. "We can get the inmate to confess whatever we want, but that is not what we need," says the chief interrogator, a Lebanese Christian. "The best way to get reliable intelligence is through dialogue and cooperation. We show them how senseless it is and how harmful for them and for their families it will be to withhold information from us." But harsher methods are also common. "Since I have been here, no one has been tortured or treated with electric shocks," says the interrogator. "Beatings, yes. From time to time we beat them, but this is on rare occasions, only with our hands, and never in a way that makes the inmate a cripple or kills him."
Even harder on the prisoners is their isolation. They are not allowed to read or write. The only news from the outside is brought by new detainees. "In the four years since I arrived here I haven't heard a radio or read a paper or a book," says Ali Ra'ad, 27, from the village of Jabah. "Sometimes I hear shooting, sometimes I hear helicopters, but I don't know who is fighting whom and why. I am completely cut off from the rest of the world."
Ali says he has been interrogated and beaten. He has told his captors what little he knows. But for prisoners like him there is little hope of freedom anytime soon. "Please ask General Lahad to pardon me, or tell the leaders of Amal to do something to secure my release," he pleads. But the guards put a dark blue hood over his head and cuff his hands to lead him back to his cell, where he will sit and wait until the lead actors in the ugly hostage affair decide to play their cards.