Thousands of Iraqi refugees in Lebanon are being threatened with jail if they do not return to their war-ravaged homes, a rights groups warned yesterday.

As Iraqi refugees start to return from years of exile in neighbouring Syria, often propelled by tougher visa regulations or a lack of money, the 50,000 who have tried to settle in Lebanon face a grim choice between prison time and the danger of returning to their still violent country.

“Refugees who are arrested face the prospect of rotting in jail indefinitely unless they agree to return to Iraq and face the dangers there,” said Bill Frelick, refugee policy director of Human Rights Watch, which issued the report. The organisation said that forcing refugees to return to a country where their lives and freedom were at risk went against international norms.

The report, titled Rot Here or Die There: Bleak Choices for Iraqi Refugees in Lebanon, called on Lebanon to allow the 50,000 Iraqis sheltering there temporary legal status and the right to work, both of which have been denied so far.

“Iraqi refugees in Lebanon live in constant fear of arrest,” said Mr Frelick. All the Iraqis who had fled their country’s sectarian warfare should be considered refugees under the 1951 Refugee Convention, which Lebanon has not signed up to.

As such, the refugees find themselves as illegal aliens, subject to arrest, fines and detention.

Lebanon, a country of only 4 million inhabitants which is already host to 300,000 long-term Palestinian refugees, is wary of normalising the status of more stragglers from the region’s endless wars. The mass influx of Palestinian refugees played an important role in its brutal civil war, and the Lebanese Army fought protracted battles with radical Islamists inside a Palestinian refugee camp this year.

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