Human Rights
Still unnamed
By Matt Nash, NOW Staff
Jul 29, 2008 - 11:27:18 AM

As calls for the release of Lebanese citizens in Syrian prisons grow louder, their exact number is still the subject of much debate. Syria has long denied holding Lebanese prisoners, and its 29-year dominance over the country prevented any serious inquiry into the subject.

Several lists of detainees exist, but all differ in the number of names. Perhaps the most accurate list is the one compiled by the NGO Support of Lebanese in Detention and Exile (SOLIDE). Since 1990, SOLIDE has worked with families of the missing to compile a list of 580 people known to be detained in Syria or to have died while in custody.

“When we write a name on our list, it comes from the families” who have seen a relative in a Syrian jail, said Ghazi Aad, SOLIDE’s director and co-founder.

During the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, many families were afraid to speak to SOLIDE for fear of reprisals from the Syrian intelligence services or of losing the visitor permits the Syrian authorities granted them. Although SOLIDE’s list is long, past experience suggests it represents only a fraction of the actual detainees.

“In 1998, when Syria released 151 [Lebanese], we had only four names out of the whole amount,” Aad said. “And in 2000, when they released 54, we had only 12 names out of the whole package. So this is a clear indication of how many people might be there that we don’t know about.”

Incomplete lists

The other lists are less comprehensive. In December 2000, the state published a list of 82 individuals, 40 of whom were dead. MP Fouad al-Saad, who formerly headed a committee dedicated to establishing how many of the 17,000 Lebanese who disappeared during the civil war languished in Syrian prisons, said in an interview last week with the Voice of Lebanon radio station that the list now stands at 91 names.

In a brief telephone conversation with NOW Lebanon, Saad said the list was based on interviews with detainees’ families and repeatedly insisted it was incomplete. His work was hampered, he said, by the political climate at the time, when Saad was told to hand the list over to then-State Prosecutor General Adnan Addoum, who was appointed in 1995 at the behest of Syria’s military intelligence chief in Lebanon, General Ghazi Kanaan. Addoum did not pursue the issue.

Finally, last Wednesday, the Al-Mustaqbal daily published 117 names, a list Aad said was very similar to Saad’s.

Several commissions have been formed to determine the precise number of Lebanese in Syrian custody, however, very little serious progress has been made. A committee formed in 1998 by then-Prime Minister Salim al-Hoss concluded in 1999 that all missing Lebanese should be declared dead. Families who had seen their relatives in Syrian prisons were outraged.

This obviously politically-motivated conclusion was never taken seriously and only served to add insult to emotional injury. A second committee was formed by the late former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the mandate of which has been continuously extended and is still functioning today. Aad, however, dismissed its importance, as it is comprised of “employees, military employees or police employees. It’s not transparent.”

A hint of progress

With talk of establishing diplomatic relations between Lebanon and Syria after the election of President Michel Sleiman and the hoopla surrounding the release of Samir Kantar, the four Hezbollah POWs and the Resistance’s dead, the detainee file has once again been thrust to the fore with several politicians and officials demanding action.

Progress of sorts was made, although the subject is still shrouded in some mystery. For the first time ever, Damascus publicly acknowledged it is holding Lebanese, a surprising shift in policy, but it was an admission that came with a callous sting. 

“I say to the families of those missing and those detained that he who has been patient for 30 years can wait a bit longer,” Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem told reporters after meeting President Sleiman on July 21. Finally, according to a short report from the National News Agency on Saturday, a delegation from Syria and Lebanon met on the border to discuss the prisoners, but the details of the meeting were not revealed.

Two days after Mouallem’s visit, Aad, from SOLIDE, met with Sleiman in an effort to persuade him to form an independent committee with foreign experts to investigate the matter. “We don’t have a legal mechanism in Lebanon to identify who was taken by the Syrians and who was killed by local militias,” Aad said. “That’s why we met the president and told him we should have a new commission based on international norms.”

Aad said that president was open to the suggestion, but this is hardly likely to offer much cheer to the families who still wait for news.