On this day 25 years ago, the Lebanese communist resistance fighter Soha Bechara was released from captivity at the El-Khiam torture and interrogation center where she had been detained for ten years, six years of those years were spent in isolation detention.
She was jailed for an attempt to assassinate Antoine Lahad in 1988, the head of the South Lebanon Army – an Israeli-backed proxy militia that terrorized South Lebanon during the Israeli occupation. Bechara is a Lebanese icon and posters featuring her were seen all around downtown Beirut in the early 1990s.
Bechara joined the Lebanese Communist Party in 1982 when she was 15 – the year that Israel invaded Lebanon – and was involved in various resistance activities. Bechara shot Lahad twice with a 5.45 mm revolver, once in the chest and once in the shoulder.
Bechara was released from El-Khiam in 1998, following international pressure. Two years after her release, the Israeli occupation of Lebanon ended and El-Khiam was turned into a museum.
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