BEIRUT (AFP) — Lebanese families fighting to learn the fate of hundreds of their relatives thought to be held in Syria have been encouraged by the unexpected release of a prisoner after 16 years in Syrian detention.

"Milad Barakat, a Lebanese, arrived in Beirut about a month ago after spending 16 years in a Syrian prison. His family had lost trace of him for seven years," said an organisation called Support of Lebanese in Detention and Exile (Solide).

Barakat is one of 650 people whom the organisation says remain in Syrian custody.

"To put it bluntly, they either remain in Syria or died as a result of torture they endured while in Syrian custody in Lebanon or Syria," Solide president Ghazi Aad told AFP.

He was referring to a 1987 Amnesty International report that documented 38 methods of torture practiced by Syrian security forces at the time.

"Lebanese intelligence arrested Barakat in April 1992 and turned him over to Syrian intelligence," Aad said, adding that a Syrian court sentenced Barakat to 15 years in prison for fighting the Syrian army in 1990, after which he was tortured.

The organisation said that Barakat refuses to see anyone except his family as he remains in a state of shock after being confined under difficult conditions for so long.

Toward the end of Lebanon's 15-year civil war, General Michel Aoun headed a temporary government and launched a "war of liberation" against Syria, which had troops deployed in eastern and northern parts of Lebanon.

Syria's forces spread throughout most of the country on October 13, 1990, the day on which many of those still missing were captured. The Lebanese army was split at the time, with most supporting Aoun and the rest Syria.

Aad said that Barakat's mother, similar to many of the missing, had visited him in the Sednaya prison in Syria until 2000 when she lost track of him and reported him missing.

"Many families reported visiting their sons in prisons in Syria only to find them gone thereafter," Aad said, adding that most depend on released prisoners for news of their loved ones.

Solide drew up a list of names, including Barakat's, of those held or missing in Syrian prisons and submitted it to a Lebanese-Syrian commission established in 2005 for this purpose.

According to Aad, the Syrian response was terse: "We do not have any information about any of the names on this list".

In spite of this, Barakat was released to the great joy of his family who had spent seven years in the dark about his whereabouts.

Aad said that the Syrian authorities kept Barakat in prison for an additional year after he served his sentence, finally releasing him in the fall of 2007. He returned to Lebanon in mid-March.

Aad said that the case of George Shaalawit is similar. He is also Lebanese and like Barakat, was included on the list of the prisoners who the Syrian authorities denied were on their territory.

"Shaalawit's parents lost all contact with him around the year 2000. They were pleasantly surprised by his release in December 2005 after 11 years in a Syrian prison without due process", said Aad.

Members of Solide have pleaded the case of missing Lebanese thought to be in Syria to political leaders of all confessions.

Fifteen lawmakers from the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority put a petition before the Lebanese government urging it "to strive to find a final solution to this issue as soon as possible with or without the Syrian government".

Sonia Eid is the president of the Commission of the Parents of Missing. She is seeking her son, a Lebanese soldier detained by Syrian forces in Lebanon in 1990 when he was 20 years old.

She remembers having visited him only once in a Syrian prison in 1990. Until 1996, Eid continued to receive news of her son from prisoners who were released. But she hasn't heard anything since 1996.

"I went to see Barakat three times after his release in the hopes of hearing something about my son. But the former prisoner was in a state of shock and completely refused to speak," said Eid.

"All that I ask the government is that it work faster and more seriously on the case of the missing," said the mother whose son would be 38 years old on Monday.