A group of men formerly detained in Khiam prison reenact their detention and torture during a sit-in on June 1, 2000—nine days after all prisoners were released from the facility. Destroyed by Israeli airstrikes during the 2006 war, Khiam was previously located in what had been a designated "security zone" inside Israeli-occupied south Lebanon. Administered by the South Lebanese Army (SLA)—an Israeli proxy militia-- Khiam was used as both an interrogation and detention center beginning in 1985, and its notoriety as a torture camp solidified throughout the final years of the Lebanese civil war. Although the conflict ended in 1990, another decade would elapse before the prison was shuttered. It was Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in May 2000 that ultimately precipitated Khiam’s closure, by which time some 5,000 prisoners had passed through its cells. 

Patrick Baz (b. 1963 in Beirut) is a French-Lebanese photographer and photojournalist. Covering war and conflict for more than 30 years, Baz is recognized for his images of the First Intifada, the First Gulf War, and subsequent conflicts in Kurdistan, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. More recently, he covered the popular uprisings that took place in Egypt and Libya. Based in Beirut, Baz is currently the MENA Operations Manager of AFP-Services, a corporate video and brand storytelling subsidiary of AFP.