Case Files

25 August 1999

Beshar Saidi

Affidavit of Beshar Saidi

August 25, 1999

My name is Beshar Saidi, age 35. I was born in Lebanon in 1964 and immigrated to the United States 1986. I finished my education with an electrical engineering degree at the school of Mines and Technology in South Dakota in 1995. Cargill employed me straight out of college. They placed me with one of their subsidaries, namely North Star Steel in Monroe, Michigan. Toward the end of 1995, I was married from my wife Sawsan, an Israeli from a Palestinian origin. We held the wedding in Amman, Jordan to allow both my parents and her parents to attend the wedding due to the difficulty of having a ceremony on either side of the Lebanese-Israeli border.

In November, 1997, my wife left the U.S. to visit her family in Galilee inside Israel to spend the Christmas holiday with them. At the same time, I left for Lebanon to visit my parents and to join my wife and her family for Christmas. In December, I flew from Lebanon to Jordan. Crossing the border to Israel, I was subjected to 8 hours of questioning about the purpose of my visit by the Israeli secret forces. Eventually, they allowed me to enter the country at the end of the day. After spending six days inside Israel visiting friends and family and touring the tourist attractions, and [just] before our flight back home, we were having the traditional Christmas dinner. Twenty Israeli secret services stormed into my parents-in law’s house and headed toward me and in a period of 5 minutes I was hand- and leg- cuffed with a huge hood covering my head and face and I was taken to one of their torture centers nearby. In the following 24 days, I was subjected to a severe process of psychological and physical torture. I was sleep deprived for periods of 48 hours at a time, offered a minimum amount of food to keep
me alive, pushed and shoved against doors and walls. My legs and hands were being tied to a feet-long chair with a dirty hood covering my head and my face for periods of 24 hours at a time. At the same time, I was threatened to be killed and eliminated physically by applying 240 V electric shocks to my body.

My wife was pregnant at the time; they convinced me repeatedly that she was being subjected to the same process
of torture in the next cell in able to drive me to confess. They accused me of aiding an illegal organization namely the Syrian Nationalist Party which is based in Lebanon and aiding the resistance in south Lebanon 14 years ago to drive the Israelis out of south Lebanon. They threatened to strip me out of my American citizenship. "We run the policy of the U.S. in the Middle East and we will get you in Detroit if you caused us any trouble," I was told. They denied me an access to a holy book, "they cursed me and cursed my faith repeatedly." They denied me my basic rights as an American citizen to see a representative from the American consulate and the right to see a lawyer. I was told to bang my head against the wall. "Your only way out of here is to coordinate with us here and in Detroit and we put you on the first flight heading back to the U.S. with a promise of a good life in the future."

During the fist period of my arrest, I was incarcerated in a 6 x 4 foot cell where I was denied the basic needs of normal life. I spent 24 days wearing the same clothes, sleeping on [a] 2-inch thick mattress full of dust and dirt. Cockroaches and mice floated over my body. At one stage of questioning, I was told that they were done with me and they convinced me that I was going to the main prison to be joined by other political prisoners. I found out later that the 20 plus inmates I spent the next three days with, turned out to be some of their agents. There, I was subjected to a long list of questions and threats of elimination, beatings. "We will cover your face with woolen
blankets until you can’t breath anymore," I was told.

During that time I was inside, my wife turned out to be free. She initiated a campaign to help [in] releasing me out of prison. She contacted many congressmen and women, state representatives, and the State Department and informed them about my abduction. With the help of many friends, she was able to apply pressure on the Israeli government to have an American counsel in Israel and a lawyer to meet with me within an approximate period of 10 days [since] my arrest. At the same time, the State Department issued a letter protesting the abuse of my human rights by the Israeli government and the willingness not to inform the American Embassy in Israel of my abduction. After being subjected [to] systematic procedures of psychological and physical torture for a period of 24 days, they submitted a list of charges against me of being an agent to an illegal organization based in Lebanon. They had no evidence or witness to backup their claims, except a piece of paper I was forced to sign under threat; I was unconscious at the
time. In the initial stage of my arrest, they denied me a lawyer. The trial procedure was conducted in a closed court, where the presence of my family was absolutely forbidden.

At the end of the 24-day period, I spent under their tight watch, I was moved to a nearby police station where I was held for a period of three months waiting for a sentence. Eventually, I was sentenced to 5 years in prison. They deported [me], after serving 18 months, on June 1999. During that time I missed the opportunity to be with my wife when she delivered our first-born son, John Majd. I did lose my job back in the U.S. The legal fees covering my case exceeded $20,000. Finally, one year and a half were [a] total waste and [time of] suffering to me and my family.

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