Lebanese Islamist prisoner asks not to be stripped naked

Controversial Islamist prisoner Sheikh Omar Bakri Fostock asked the chief judge of the military court in Beirut to cancel the “military privacy” ruling over him as it authorises the security officers to undress him, LBCI reported yesterday.

Fostock has been asked to remove even his underwear while being transferred from Roumieh Prison to the court or the hospital.

Before he announced the adjournment of Fostock’s trial, the judge told him that he does not have the power to cancel the “military privacy” ruling over him. The judge advised he ask the prisons’ authority to do so.

A controversial Islamist and political leader, Fostock spent a couples of years in London and returned to Lebanon after the 2005 bombings.

On November 12, 2010, he was among 54 people sentenced by a military court to life in prison with hard labour after being accused of acts of terrorism. He was not arrested then. Two days later, he was arrested by the Lebanese police.

Last year, his daughter told Saudi’s Al-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper that his family visit him in prison three times a week. Each visit lasts only for four minutes.