Lebanon prison takeover ends with 2 dead

ROUMIEH, Lebanon, April 6 (UPI) -- Several days of rioting by inmates of a prison in Roumieh, Lebanon, ended early Wednesday when security forces stormed the facility, officials said.

One inmate died when a percussion bomb went off in his hands and a second died of a heart attack, the online Lebanese news site Naharnet reported. Fourteen inmates and five security personnel were injured.

Security force officials said personnel moved to quash the riots, which began Saturday, after a fire was started in one of the buildings.

"Despite the promises made to all the inmates' reasonable demands, the riots reached such an extent that some internal prisons were opened up to each other, which presented a real danger to the lives of different prisoners," the officials said in a statement.

The inmates had "systematically destroyed the prison whereby they fused some of the internal doors together through equipment they managed to get their hands on," the statement added.

The prison, designed for about 1,500 inmates, has about 4,000 prisoners guarded by 200 security personnel, Naharnet said.

The Daily Star in Beirut reported the riots started out as inmate protests against deteriorating living conditions and the slow pace of legal proceedings for those being held, often without formal charges.

"My 28-year-old son has been inside his [prison cell] for four years now and there has been no proper trial to charge him of crimes [that he is accused of]," Zeinab Allam told the Star.

Human rights activist Ali Akil Khalil, who acted as a mediator between prisoners and security forces, read a statement by the inmates in which they demanded a general amnesty and a one-year prison term be reduced to nine months.

Caretaker Interior Minister Ziyad Baroud acknowledged "the rightful demands" being made by the prisoners.