Articles
Dead or alive? It’s time we know
By Manal Sarrouf (NOWLebanon
Nov 19, 2009 - 8:41:55 AM

"It was a shock...the hero is gone," Violette Nassif, the mother of Johnny Nassif, the 15-year-old Lebanese soldier who went missing on October 13, 1990 and whose remains were recently identified, told NOW over the phone. For years, Violette and her family have believed that their son was being detained in Syria.

Violette, fully dressed in black with a pale and drawn face, receives condolences at her home in Bourj Hammoud. She refuses to make statements to the media, explaining that she is on medication and "has lost all hope."

Johnny's remains, along with those of his comrades in Battalion 102, were first discovered in December 2005 when a mass grave on the grounds of the Defense Ministry headquarters in Yarze was unearthed after the Syrian army withdrew from Lebanon. Initially, only seven of the bodies in the grave were identified, but it was thought that one of the three remaining corpses belonged to Johnny. Around three months ago, Violette finally accepted submitting to a DNA test upon her return from a nine-month visit to her children in Australia.

"She never trusted the Lebanese Army Command or the Lebanese authorities because they were depriving her of her right to know [her son's fate]," said Ghazi Aad, founder of the NGO Support of Lebanese in Detention and Exile (SOLIDE), when asked why Violette refrained from submitting to the test earlier.

Violette had been led on by numerous Lebanese authorities since her son's disappearance almost 20 years ago. On October 13, 1990 the Lebanese army reported that Johnny Nassif had died in a battle that took place in the village of Dahr al-Wahesh during the Liberation War against Syria launched by former Army Commander Michel Aoun. Violette had searched for her son in the nearby military hospitals for several days following the battle but could not find him. Two months later, the family received a Lebanese army communiqué saying that Johnny and five other soldiers were not killed on October 13.

According to Aad, Violette followed the actions of many other families of missing soldiers and started contacting Syrian officers and the Lebanese officials close to them to see if they had any information on her son's whereabouts. She even managed to receive a visiting permit to a detention facility in Syria in 1991. "Violette says she saw her son in Syria. I do not know if she saw him very closely or from afar," Aad told NOW.

Aad says it is possible Johnny and his comrades could have survived the battle of October 13, 1990 and been taken as prisoners to Syria, where they were killed and then transferred back to the mass grave in Yarze. He notes that the Syrians controlled the Defense Ministry and indeed the entire country during the nearly 30-year period they occupied Lebanon.

"They had a lot of time to cover up what they did," he said. He also pointed out that no tests were carried out to pinpoint the date the soldiers died.

Further evidence Johnny may not have died in battle comes with the story of Officer Robert Abu Serhal, whose remains were identified in the Yarze grave in 2005 and who was reportedly seen alive after October 13, 1990. Abu Serhal was allegedly abducted by the Syrian army on October 14, 1991 from Aad's friend's home in Monte Verde and seen "safe and sound" by another army officer who happened to be passing on the road when Abu Serhal was taken to Syria. The army officer attempted to convince the Syrians to take Abu Serhal to the Defense Ministry, but he said they told him the issue was "none of his business." Later in 2005, an Iraqi refugee who was applying for political asylum at the United Nations Higher Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) headquarters in Beirut reported that Abu Serhal was imprisoned with him in Syria in the early 1990s.

Yet a former Red Cross volunteer who had worked on the battlefield in 1990 and who was present when the Yarze mass grave was unearthed in 2005 says he saw Johnny Nassif being buried.

He said that the Red Cross had wrapped the bodies and tagged them with numbers in the week following the battle in 1990. They had also filmed the soldiers' faces and the tags on their bodies as they were being handed over to the Lebanese army before their burial in the mass grave on October 24, 1990. "Most soldiers were shot in their heads, and their bodies were piled on top of each other," he said. The footage, however, has disappeared.

Some families were given the wrong corpses during the war, but when the mass grave was excavated the bodies were exchanged, the volunteer said, pointing out that two more bodies had been added to the grave after the first group was buried.

Regardless of what happened, Aad claims that Lebanese army officials would deceive the families of the missing and would "strengthen the families' beliefs that their sons were detained in Syria" and promise that they were investigating. He cites the yearly visits Lebanese army officials would make to families of the missing on Army Day, including Violette Nassif and Sonia Eid, the president of the Commission of Parents of Missing, who is still looking for her son, a Lebanese soldier detained by the Syrian army in Lebanon in 1990 when he was 20 years old.

"Although the news was heartbreaking, Violette Nassif was at least able to know her son's fate, 19 years after his disappearance," says another mother of a missing soldier.

Amid all the complications and with so many unanswered questions, Aad believes the best way to deal with the issue of the missing is to establish a national commission of inquiry that would map Lebanese territories and record how many people disappeared from 1975 to 2005. The committee would have access to the Internal Security Forces and Army Intelligence archives. "We also need to classify the missing persons into two groups: those who were kidnapped by local militias and those who were abducted by regional powers such as Syria, the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel." He also wants the establishment of a DNA database of unearthed remains.

Aad argues that no matter where the bodies of the missing are found, Lebanese authorities are responsible for investigating how they were killed and by whom. "Our cause is not based on hope but on our right to know. Hope fluctuates, so it is a matter of rights."