Ghanem says the Islamist prisoners receive special treatment and privileges: They are sent hot meals during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, he claims, and have cell phones, which are technically banned in Roumieh. Inmates confirm that such favoritism is common inside the prison and that guards can easily be bribed to provide amenities such as air-conditioning and better rooms, or to turn a blind eye to contraband.
"The more money you have, the better you're treated by the police and the prisoners," says Georges. "If you're rich, you eat well, sleep well, and live well."
Just like outside the prison walls, political clout is even more valuable than wealth.
"It's not fair that a couple of hundred guys can have everything their own way all the time, but that's the way it goes here -- politics and wasta are the most important things," says another inmate, Elias, using an Arabic term that loosely translates as nepotism or connections.
Those inmates without wealth or wasta are often forced to sell their services -- or their bodies -- to those at the top of the totem pole.
"Illegal immigrants and poor Lebanese often work as maids for the other prisoners," says Mohanna Ishak, an attorney for the Association of Justice and Mercy, an NGO that provides services inside Roumieh. "They have no families to support them, so they are forced to work for cigarettes, which they sell in exchange for money at a little store they have in the prison. Money of any kind isn't technically allowed in the prison, but they get around it."
Sometimes, an inmate's only currency is sexual favors. "Prison is all about deprivation, and that includes deprivation of heterosexual activity," says Omar Nashabi, a sociology professor at the Lebanese American University who has studied Lebanese prisons. "Many prisoners force others to engage in sexual activities with them -- that is, rape. Prostitution is also a problem.… Some men will wear makeup, perfume, and wigs and pretend to be women. The other prisoners call them 'rabbits.'"
"The major problem is that the police are not trained to run a prison," Nashabi adds. "It's not their job, and they're not qualified … so they're forced to enter negotiations with these prisoners. And these negotiations sometimes go too far."
Georges says the prisoners are almost completely autonomous and usually govern each other with hardly any interference on the part of the guards.
"We deal with our problems ourselves," he says. "The police rarely get involved unless we ask them to. They're basically just here to open and close the gates."
Joseph Moussallem, spokesman for the Lebanese Internal Security Forces, doesn't want to get dragged into a discussion of the Islamists' influence inside Roumieh.
"There's no problem there right now, today," he says. "There used to be some problems, but I can't get into the reasons. It's a big question, and I don't think I can answer that over the phone … or without permission from my superiors."
Security forces do raid Block B from time to time, and some attempts have recently been made to curb the Islamists' power inside the prison. In January, their notorious leader, Mohammad Youssef, was charged and sentenced to death for the murder of a fellow inmate.
Given such crackdowns, the Islamists dismiss suggestions that they dominate the prison. Their advocate on the outside, Sheikh Nabil Rahim, was himself imprisoned in Roumieh in 2008 for alleged ties to Fatah al-Islam. He has an impressive air-conditioned office in the northern city of Tripoli, by far the nicest building on the block. Rahim -- a polite, careful man dressed in black sheikh's robes -- denies the allegations of special treatment and rabble-rousing leveled against the Islamist inmates.
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