Katherine Harbord, a lecturer in human rights specialised in the Middle East whom we interviewed for this report in October 2022 whilst sharing her knowledge on checkpoints specifically in the North of Lebanon, recalls a non-ID man who reported ill-treatment whilst been detained:
“[...] I’ve heard of one person who was arrested but this is going back about five or six years. He was arrested by the police. He was a non-ID man. He was ostensibly arrested because of his lack of ID and kind of suspicion of illegal status or something like that. He was removed to a detention centre, not exactly prison. He reported ill-treatment. And his family was able to secure his release through payment of a bribe. And again, he felt that his status as a non-ID Palestinian was behind this and that his arrest was an opportunity for a bribe. Certainly anecdotally based on the numbers of persons I talked to on this matter, but Syrian Palestinians perceived that they experience more discrimination than other Palestinian groups and receive more verbal abuse and sort of racist “behaviour.” There’s a lot of prejudice against them. There’s obviously a lot of prejudice against stateless Palestinians, full stop, especially in Lebanon. But this is kind of magnified for the Syrian Palestinians.”
(Source: Katherine Harbord, interview record, 13 October 2022)