Jointly published by the United States Committee for a Free Lebanon and the Middle East Forum
 | | Interview: Ghazi Aad
Director of SOLIDE |
Ghazi Aad is the director of SOLIDE (Support of Lebanese in Detention and Exile), a Lebanese human rights group working for the release of Lebanese detainees in Syrian prisons and the return of all Lebanese who are victims of enforced or voluntary exile due to the political situation in Lebanon.
MEIB editor Gary C. Gambill spoke with Mr. Aad during his trip to New York in March to testify before the UN Human Rights Committee, which held hearings pertaining to its second periodic report on Syrian compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Last December, when the Syrians released 46 Lebanese detainees, Lebanese General Prosecutor Adnan Addoum announced that no more Lebanese were being held in Syrian prisons, apart from 95 who were tried and convicted of ordinary criminal charges. Have all the political detainees been released?
When Addoum went to Syria a few days before the release, he did not know how many Lebanese would be released or what their names were. But when he came back with the 46, he said all of them had been accounted for.
According to our information, not all the Lebanese were released. There are still hundreds of Lebanese detained in Syria.
How do you know that there are more being held?
We know from the families, many of whom had until recently been allowed to visit their loved ones in Syrian prisons, but recently these privileges were taken away. We also take into account what previously released detainees have told us. And we know from the circumstances of certain cases where people were openly abducted at Syrian checkpoints by plainclothes intelligence officers.
How many detainees can you confirm are now in Syrian prisons through direct eye witness accounts?
We have a list of 179. The actual number of detainees is much higher, but we cannot tell for sure because most families are too afraid to contact us.
Why were these Lebanese abducted?
To intimidate the population. It is similar to the reign of terror the Assad regime imposed on his its own people to consolidate its power in Syria. The same methods are used to consolidate Syrian control over Lebanon.
I'll give you a chronology. In 1976, Syria entered Lebanon and clashed with the leftist National Movement, headed by Kamal Jumblatt. So they abducted many people affiliated with that movement. In 1978, Syrian forces clashed with the Christian militias, and so they abducted people involved with these groups. In 1986, they had clashes with the Islamic fundamentalists in Tripoli and arrested hundreds of them. In 1989-1990, they had clashes with the Lebanese army under the command of Gen. Michel Aoun and arrested many soldiers and civilians who supported Aoun. After 1990, they started to pick up people who opposed the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, charging them with collaborating with Israel and putting them in Syrian jails.
What has been the attitude of the Lebanese government on this issue?
Denial, denial, and then denial. They never acknowledged the presence of any Lebanese in Syria. In 1993, President Elias Hrawi in an interview with the BBC said there are no Lebanese detained in Syria. In October 1996, Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri came to Washington DC and publicly denied that there were any Lebanese held by Syria.
But a month later, on November 24, Hrawi gave a press conference at Baabda Palace and admitted the presence of 210 Lebanese in Syrian prisons. After this, however, came a series of denials from the Lebanese general prosecutor, the minister of justice and others.
What initiatives have been taken by your group on behalf of the detainees in Syria?
At the beginning, our focus was proving to the world that there are Lebanese detained in Syria, a difficult task in light of the constant denials by the Lebanese and Syrian governments. We established contact with international organizations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and we gave them certain case files to prove that what we were saying is true and not just a case of trying to embarrass Syria. Soon after, these organizations began publishing their own reports on the issue. The May 1997 Human Rights Watch report, entitled "An Alliance Beyond the Law," and the 1999 Amnesty International report, entitled "The Lebanese Detainees in Syria: Victims of a Regional Conflict," were milestones.
And now we're trying to bring our case before the UN Human Rights Committee. Specifically, that Syria's continuing detention of Lebanese citizens violates article 6, 7, 9, and 14 of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights.
You just met with the committee, correct?
Yes. We submitted our report and two days ago we had an hour-long meeting with the committee, which is chaired by Japanese law professor Nsuko Indo and includes members from countries such as France, Spain, Britain, the United States, and Belgium.
All of them started asking very detailed questions, about why Syria is abducting these people, how many Lebanese there are in Syrian prisons, to what political parties do they belong. So we answered all of the questions and explained everything, since Syria, in its second periodic report to the committee, did not mention anything about Lebanese citizens detained by Syrian forces. So we had to do our duty in that regard by giving the report and telling the committee about it.
And now we're waiting for the final session, which will be attended by a representative of the Syrian government, and the record of the Syrian government will be discussed. So we will be there in case we are asked to elaborate on our report.
What do you think will happen once the UN releases its report?
Our main objective is to make the committee adopt a recommendation that would ask the government of Syria to publicly release a complete and thorough list of all the Lebanese who have been detained in Syrian prisons since 1976, including those who died in prison and people who were executed. Not all of these people were originally abducted by Syrian forces. A number of people were transferred to Syria from [Lebanese] militias allied with Syria, and vice versa.
Has the UN made any such recommendations before?
No, not yet. This is the first time they've discussed the issue and we hope that they will adopt the recommendation in the final session.
If that happens, do you think the Syrian government will respond?
We want this recommendation as a step not to close the file, because the Syrian government, with the collaboration of the Lebanese government, is trying to close this file. Adopting this recommendation is the first step in preventing this from happening. The file must remain open until the whole truth is known.
Syria is currently in the process of negotiating economic agreements with the European Union. Have you undertaken any efforts in Europe, where Syria has clear economic interests at stake, to make a full accounting of Lebanese detainees in Syria a precondition for such agreements?
Yes. As you know, Article 2 of the 1995 Barcelona Declaration [which established the Euro-Mediterranean partnership] obligates Syria and other signatories to "act in accordance with the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."
So we went to the European Parliament to address the issue and they adopted a resolution on March 12, 1998 asking the government of Syria to release all of the Lebanese detainees in its prisons and asking the member states to include the issue of the Lebanese detainees in any discussions regarding the Euro-Mediterranean partnership that they have with the governments of Syria and Lebanon.
Does the issue of the Lebanese detainees interfere with efforts to account for the 17,000 Lebanese who disappeared during the 1975-1990 civil war and are still unaccounted for?
Yes, of course. As I mentioned before, many Lebanese abducted by pro-Syrian militias were later transferred to Syria.
In December, when the Lebanese government announced that 46 Lebanese detained in Syrian prisons were going to be released, it appeared that hundreds of people awaited the arrival of the bus carrying the detainees. It seems that a lot of people who have relatives that disappeared during the civil war, ironically, holding out hope that their loved ones may be among those held in Syrian prisons.
The government has even helped promote this view by saying that those who raise the issue are reopening the civil war past.
Out of these 46 detainees, how many did you previously know to be detained in Syria?
Only eight.
So the other 38 detainees were assumed to have been among the 17,000 disappeared?
We didn't have them on our list. The same thing happened in March 1998, when 121 Lebanese were released. We had only four of them on our list at the time.
So, by extension, if most released detainees have not appeared on your list, then the number of detainees could possibly be many times the number that you have information about.
That's for sure. There are probably many more Lebanese detained in Syria.
Do you think that Syria benefits from the fact that so many Lebanese who have loved ones that disappeared during the war don't know for sure what happened to them?
Oh, yes. There is a thriving industry of Syrian and Lebanese "brokers" in our country who take money from these people and provide them with false information, false hope.
Can you give me an example? Have you spoken with people who have been taken advantage of?
Yes. Sonia Eid, who heads the parents' committee, has paid around $30,000 to various people in order to find out what happened to her son.
Would you say that that's typical of what other relatives have experienced?
Not all the relatives, but extortion by Lebanese and Syrian brokers is a common practice in Lebanon.
So Syria derives an economic benefit from its detention of Lebanese citizens?
Well, Syrian military and intelligence officers certainly do.
Then isn't it likely that the Syrian intelligence apparatus in Lebanon is more opposed to the release of the detainees than President Bashar Assad? Doesn't Assad have an interest in improving international perceptions of Syria?
I'm not so sure Assad wants to clean up the situation. We had a bad experience with him two years ago, after his father gave him control of the "Lebanon file." Sonia Eid led a delegation of the parents committee to see Bashar at his office in Damascus. He wasn't there, so they left him a letter asking him to work on this case and bring about the release of the detainees. His answer came two weeks later, when Bashar's secretary sent them to see the military police, who started yelling at them and accusing them. They returned to Lebanon and, a week later, they were summoned to Anjar, where a Syrian officer threatened them and told them not to talk about this publicly anymore.
Have you found it difficult to freely campaign on behalf of the detainees? What kinds of obstacles have you faced in Lebanon?
Well, first of all, nobody would listen. Second, nobody would talk. The media totally ignored our efforts until recently. Even now, we cannot go on television to talk about this subject. The newspapers will discuss it, but this is new.
The mukhabarat [secret police] came to us several times, and they told the families not to talk about it. They put a lot of pressure on us and the families. This illustrates what the attitude of the Lebanese government is on this subject.
Is the level of harassment beginning to decline?
A little bit. People are talking more and more freely about the subject, but not the government - it's still blocking the issue.
Related Articles
"Syria and the Politics of Arbitrary Detention in Lebanon," Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, January 2001.
� 2001 Middle East Intelligence Bulletin. All rights reserved.
MEIB Main Page
