Fear for the missing as relations improve

Jonathan Spollen, Assistant Foreign Editor

• Last Updated: May 07. 2009 1:23AM UAE / May 6. 2009 9:23PM GMT

The opening of a Lebanese Embassy in Damascus last month may have been a step towards drawing a line under the neighbouring countries’ fractious past, but for Jocelyne Cherfane, who has not seen her uncle since he was accosted by Syrian troops nearly 20 years ago, the event had little meaning.

On Oct 13 1990, Albert Cherfane, a Maronite Catholic priest, along with another priest and about 20 Lebanese soldiers, was arrested in the mountainous village of Beit Meri, eight kilometres east of Beirut, and has never been seen since. No reason was ever given for his arrest.

“He was so nice, a lovely man. He loved making music, religious music. We used to go to the church with him,” Ms Cherfane said of her uncle, who would now be 74.

Albert Cherfane is one of several hundred Lebanese who disappeared during Syria’s military occupation of Lebanon from 1976-2005, according to rights groups and families of the missing. Many are known to still be imprisoned in Syrian jails, though some have been handed over by Syria, as in 1998 when Damascus released 121 prisoners, and in 2000 when another 54 were set free.

According to the Beirut-based organisation Solide (Support of Lebanese in Detention and Exile), there are at least 600 individuals in Syrian custody, though many could now be dead. Ghazi Aad, Solide’s director, believes the numbers are “much higher”.

The Cherfane family says they have exhausted every avenue in their attempts to find Albert, from lobbying Lebanese politicians and ministers to putting pressure on Syria, to getting the late Pope John Paul II to write to the Syrian president seeking his release. In recent years, after receiving tips from prisoners who had contacted the family claiming to have seen Albert, they visited two Syrian prisons, paying prison guards thousands of dollars in bribes in the process. But their efforts were to no avail.

The most painful experience, Ms Cherfane said, was in 2006 when a mass grave containing 20 bodies, many of them unrecognisable, was uncovered in the western town of Baabda. But DNA tests showed none of them was Albert.

“We just want to know the truth. If he is still alive we want him returned, if he is dead we want the remains so we can bury him,” Ms Cherfane said.

Despite having released Lebanese prisoners in the past, Syria has never officially acknowledged abducting individuals throughout the 29 years it had a military presence in Lebanon and does not acknowledge holding them now.

Walid Muallem, Syria’s foreign minister, however, did seem to admit otherwise in July on a trip to Beirut.

“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,” he said.

Mr Aad, of Solide, said warming relations between Lebanon and Syria may actually make the task of finding disappeared Lebanese more difficult, as politicians are being careful not to upset the process of rapprochement.

“Between 2005-08 the atmosphere was feasible, but now with rapprochement it’s not feasible. Given the political situation, they [Lebanese politicians] can’t approach Syria about these things.”

Solide and other rights groups have had a number of successes over the years, not least with the prisoner releases of 1998 and 2000. Persistent lobbying brought about European Parliament resolutions in 1998 and 2005 asking all members to raise the issue with Syria. There has been a sit-in outside UN house in Beirut for the past four years and efforts are ongoing to get the UN to establish a commission of inquiry into the missing Lebanese.

“The international community should exert pressure on Syria, make this a priority,” Mr Aad said.

Ms Cherfane agreed that a recourse to international law would be the best way to press their cause.

“Nothing can help except the UN. They have to make a commission, like for Hariri, to investigate the cases, otherwise we will not know the truth.” But Ayman Abdel Nour, a member of the Syrian Baath party and editor of all4syria.com, a politics website, said the issue should be resolved locally, perhaps tied in to the current rapprochement.

“The Lebanese want to go international, but it’s better to keep it local. They have to sort all these problems that are still not solved. Let’s finish it,” he said.

Ms Cherfane and other relatives of the missing worry that the longer the issue goes unresolved, the less chance they have of learning the fate of their loved ones, or indeed ever seeing them again if they are alive.

“Sometimes we are optimistic, sometimes not.”

jspollen@thenational.ae