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Hassan Diab… an Academic Who Will Become Prime Minister With Support of the ‘Resistance’

Hassan Diab… an Academic Who Will Become Prime Minister With Support of the ‘Resistance’
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Hassan Diab… an Academic Who Will Become Prime Minister With Support of the ‘Resistance’

Hassan Diab… an Academic Who Will Become Prime Minister With Support of the ‘Resistance’

There is no doubt that Dr. Hassan Diab, who received the backing of the majority of parliamentarians to form a government, has the qualities of a technocrat. He is a prominent academic whose achievements led to his appointment as the vice-president of the American University of Beirut. However, he is not independent of the political class. Indeed, he was a member of this class during his tenure as Minister of Education in Najib Mikati’s government, which has been described as a “one-sided government” and a “March 8 government”, a government which was formed in accordance with the aspirations of Hezbollah. Today, he is close to heading a government backed by the axis of resistance.

Dr. Diab has the needed requisites to qualify for the primary Sunni position in Lebanon (prime minister). Born on the 6th of January 1959, Diab hails from a prominent Beirut family and is married with three children. He has been working at the AUB since 1985, briefly leaving his position from time to time before returning to it, like he did between 2011 and 2014 when he was appointed minister of education.

The appointed Prime Minister holds a bachelor’s degree (with Honors) in Communications Engineering, a master’s degree (with distinction) in Systems Engineering, and a doctorate in Computer Engineering. He is a Professor of Computer Engineering at the Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture in AUB and has contributed to over 100 internationally refereed journals and conferences. Also, he has held many prominent academic positions; most notably, he was appointed Founding Dean of the College of Engineering and Founding President at Dhofar University in Oman in 2004 and Vice President of regional foreign programs at the American University of Beirut since 2006.

Politically, politicians loyal to the Shiite duo (Hezbollah and Amal) and President Michel Aoun, find in him the ideal candidate because, alongside his distinguished career, “he is not part of the corrupt political class”. This alliance rushed to spread the word about his merits and positive qualities. The most eye-catching Tweet came courtesy of Nemat Frem who recently left the “Strong Lebanon” block led by Gebran Bassil: “The word of justice must be said about the man who accompanied me in university as a professor and whom I later developed a relationship that was warm and respectful”.

He added: “Hassan Diab is trustworthy, independent, qualified, and honest; these are the needed qualities for this crucial period. Now we have to see the shape the government will take and the program it will adopt”.

However, Diab did not go unscathed, with claims that he has been chosen beforehand by the Shiite duo, with Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, with whom he has a longstanding relationship, naming him. Diab had visited President Aoun several times already at the Presidential Palace, and there had been reports that arrangements were being made for him to form a government days before Hariri stepped aside.

Many activists took to social media to decry the appointment. The most noticeable of these was a post by Dr. Hamam Kadara, who said that Hassan Diab had visited his office and his him to give his son a job, saying “give him a job and I’ll pay his salary”, ending the post say “good luck to daddy on leading the anti-corruption government”. Activists also attacked his record as Education Minister, accusing him of “documenting his achievements in a book that cost 70 million Liras (around 50 thousand dollars)”. They also referred to the fact that he replaced the name of a major public school in Beirut with his mother’s name, and said that he was the only education minister to raise the tuition of the Lebanese University. He doubled tuition, from 200,000 Liras to 400,000 (around 280 dollars) without making any improvements to the university.

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Long Silenced by Fear, Syrians Now Speak about Rampant Torture under Assad

People walk through a corridor of Syria's infamous Saydnaya military prison, just north of Damascus, Syria, on Dec. 9, 2024. (AP)
People walk through a corridor of Syria's infamous Saydnaya military prison, just north of Damascus, Syria, on Dec. 9, 2024. (AP)
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Long Silenced by Fear, Syrians Now Speak about Rampant Torture under Assad

People walk through a corridor of Syria's infamous Saydnaya military prison, just north of Damascus, Syria, on Dec. 9, 2024. (AP)
People walk through a corridor of Syria's infamous Saydnaya military prison, just north of Damascus, Syria, on Dec. 9, 2024. (AP)

Handcuffed and squatting on the floor, Abdullah Zahra saw smoke rising from his cellmate’s flesh as his torturers gave him electric shocks.

Then it was Zahra’s turn. They hanged the 20-year-old university student from his wrists and electrocuted and beat him for two hours. They made his father watch and taunted him about his son’s torment.

That was 2012, and the entire security apparatus of Syria’s then-President Bashar Assad was deployed to crush the protests against his rule.

With Assad’s fall a month ago, the machinery of death that he ran is starting to come out into the open.

It was systematic and well-organized, growing to more than 100 detention facilities into which tens of thousands disappeared over more than a decade. Torture, sexual violence and mass executions were rampant, according to rights groups and former prisoners.

A blanket of fear kept Syrians silent about their experiences or lost loved ones. But now, everyone is talking. After the insurgents who swept Assad out of power on Dec. 8 opened prisons and detention facilities, crowds swarmed in, searching for answers, bodies of loved ones, and ways to heal.

The Associated Press visited seven of these facilities in Damascus and spoke to nine former detainees. Some details of the accounts by those who spoke to the AP could not be independently confirmed, but they matched past reports by former detainees to human rights groups.

Days after Assad’s fall, Zahra — now 33 — came to visit Branch 215, a detention facility run by military intelligence in Damascus where he was held for two months.

There, he said, he was kept in a windowless underground cell, 4-by-4-meters (yards) and crammed with 100 other inmates. When ventilators were cut off -- either intentionally or because of a power failure -- some suffocated. Men went mad; torture wounds festered. When a cellmate died, they stowed his body next to the cell’s toilet until jailers collected corpses, Zahra said.

“Death was the least bad thing,” he said. “We reached a place where death was easier than staying here for one minute.”

A member of the security forces for the new interim Syrian government stands next to prison cells at the Palestine Branch, a detention facility operated by the General Intelligence Agency during Bashar al-Assad's regime, in Damascus, Syria, on Dec. 14, 2024. (AP)

Assad’s system of repression grew as civil war raged

After he and his father were released, Zahra fled to opposition-held areas. Within a few months, security agents returned and dragged off 13 of his male relatives, including a younger brother and, again, his father.

All were killed. Zahra later recognized their bodies among photos leaked by a defector showing thousands killed in detention. Their bodies were never recovered.

Rights groups estimate at least 150,000 people went missing since anti-government protests began in 2011, most vanishing into detention facilities. Many were killed, either in mass executions or from torture and prison conditions. The exact number remains unknown.

Even before the uprising, Assad had ruled with an iron fist. But as protests turned into a civil war that would last 14 years, Assad expanded his system of repression. New detention facilities run by military, security and intelligence agencies sprung up in security compounds, military airports and under buildings.

At Branch 215, Zahra hoped to find some sign of his lost relatives. But there was nothing. At home, his aunt, Rajaa Zahra, looked at the leaked pictures of her killed children for the first time – something she had long refused to do. She lost four of her six sons in Assad’s crackdowns. Her brother, she said, lost two of his three sons.

“They were hoping to finish off all the young men of the country.”

A site believed to be a mass grave for detainees killed under Bashar al-Assad's rule is visible in Najha, south of Damascus, Syria, on Dec. 17, 2024. (AP)

Syrians were tortured with ‘the tire’ and ‘magic carpet’

The tortures had names. One was called the “magic carpet,” where a detainee was strapped to a hinged wooden plank that bends in half, folding his head to his feet, which were then beaten.

Abdul-Karim Hajeko said he endured this five times. His torturers stomped on his back during interrogations at the Criminal Security branch, and his vertebrae are still broken.

“My screams would go to heaven. Once a doctor came down from the fourth floor (to the ground floor) because of my screams,” he said.

He was also put in “the tire.” His legs were bent inside a car tire as interrogators beat his back and feet. Afterward, they ordered him to kiss the tire and thank it for teaching him “how to behave.”

Many prisoners said the tire was inflicted for rule violations -- like making noise, raising one’s head in front of guards, or praying – or for no reason at all.

Saleh Turki Yahia said a cellmate died nearly every day during the seven months in 2012 he was held at the Palestine Branch, a detention facility run by the General Intelligence Agency. He said he was given electric shocks, hanged from his wrists, beaten on his feet. He lost half his body weight and nearly tore his own skin scratching from scabies.

“They broke us,” he said, breaking into tears as he visited the Palestine Branch. “A whole generation is destroyed.”

Documents are scattered around Branch 215, a detention facility run by Bashar al-Assad's regime, in Damascus, Syria, on Dec. 17, 2024. (AP)

The mounting evidence will be used in trials

Now comes the monumental task of accounting for the missing and compiling evidence that could one day be used to prosecute Assad’s officials, whether by Syrian or international courts.

Hundreds of thousands of documents remain scattered throughout detention facilities. Some seen by the AP included transcripts of phone conversations; intelligence files on activists; and a list of hundreds of prisoners killed in detention. At least 15 mass graves have been identified around Damascus and elsewhere around the country.

A UN body known as the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism has offered to help the new interim administration in collecting, organizing and analyzing all the material. Since 2011, it has been compiling evidence and supporting investigations in over 200 criminal cases against figures in Assad’s government.

Many want answers now.

Officials cannot just declare that the missing are presumed dead, said Wafaa Mustafa, a Syrian journalist, whose father was detained and killed 12 years ago.

“No one gets to tell the families what happened without evidence, without search, without work.”