The trial for nine protesters accused of rioting and damaging private property in Downtown Beirut on Oct. 8, 2015, were transferred Monday from a military to a civilian court.
"I'm very relieved and happy about this development," Layal Siblani, one of the accused, told The Daily Star. "I hope this will be a legal precedent for future cases like ours.”
A date for the nine protesters’ trial has not yet been scheduled, Siblani said.
"This is what we had been calling for all along. This shows that the military court, in practice, is doing much more than they are allowed to within their legal jurisdiction," one of the activists' lawyers, Ghida Frangieh told The Daily Star.
"The significance of this is that October 8 was the last protest before it died down," Frangieh added. "People were afraid to protest after that night."
Human Rights Watch Lebanon Researcher Bassam Khawaja told The Daily Star that today's development was "a step in a positive direction."
Five other protesters accused of attacking security forces that night will not have their trials transferred to civilian courts, as such cases fall under the jurisdiction of Lebanon’s military.
Their case was postponed until April 24.
"We remain concerned about the five activists who will still face military trial," Khawaja said.
"Even when we were in the [Jan. 31 military] court session, it was clear that there were individuals coming forward with claims that they were coerced into confessing to crimes and they were not taken seriously," Human Rights Watch MENA Deputy Director Lama Fakih told The Daily Star.
Fourteen civilians and one soldier appeared before Beirut’s Military Tribunal in January on charges connected to the You Stink movement protests against the government’s handling of the 2015-16 trash crisis.
The defendants have been charged with forming armed gangs, vandalizing public property and assaulting security forces. Thirteen were present in court, with two standing trial in absentia.
The closure of the Naameh landfill south of Beirut in July 17, 2015, sparked a monthslong crisis that left tons of garbage on the streets of Beirut and Mount Lebanon. The crisis led to mass demonstrations to demand government action. While they began as peaceful gatherings, later demonstrations were marred by clashes between protesters and the police.
A video circulated online of soldiers firing into the air above protests and at a separate demonstration rocks were thrown at police. Water cannons were also deployed to disperse crowds before authorities deployed a more hands off approach to crowd control using fencing and barbed wire to separate crowds from officers.
Although the severity of the issues has died down, garbage disposal continues to remain a critical issue in Lebanon.
