Free our detainees in Syria & Israel : Sign the petition NOW !

[J()e]

نشرت المنظمة الوطنية لحقوق الإنسان في سورية على موقعها الالكتروني امس ثلاثة تقارير عن وضع الحريات السياسية والمساجين والمعتقلين في سورية.. وفي ما يلي بعض أبرز ما ضمته التقارير:

أحكام محكمة أمن الدولة للعام 2006: 79 حكماً يبلغ مجموعها 700سنة فقط .

200 معتقل لبناني في سورية بعضهم منذ 30 سنة, بينهم عدد كبير من العسكريين اعتقلوا في الثمانينات, وعدد من العسكريين اعتقلوا في مطلع التسعينات. وهنالك قسم منهم "خطفته حركة "أمل" وحُوِّل" إلى السوريين.

قائمة غير كاملة بأسماء الممنوعين من السفر.
مئات المعتقلين من فئة "لم توجه لهم أية تهمة" أو "لم تُعرَف أسباب الاعتقال".
الحصة الكبرى لأصحاب "التوجه الإسلامي" و"الإخوان المسلمين" و"السلفيين", وكذلك "حزب التحرير الإسلامي"! وهنالك دفعة كبرى ممن وقعوا "إعلان بيروت دمشق". ودفعة كبيرة ل¯"عملية الإذاعة والتلفزيون". ودفعة كبيرة جداً للمتهمين ب¯"الاحتفال بعيد النوروز".

يتضمن التقرير قائمة ب800 سوري مفقودين في لبنان.

قائمة الممنوعين من السفر.
في تطور متصل دعمت ثلاث منظمات حقوقية سورية لجنة معنية بأوضاع المعتقلين السياسيين السابقين في سورية, وطالبت بمعالجة أوضاعهم, مشيرة إلى معاناتهم المريرة في مرحلة ما بعد الخروج من السجن.

وعقدت "لجنة متابعة أوضاع المعتقلين السياسيين السابقين" لقاء الجمعة لاستعراض تعاطي الجهات الحكومية السورية مع هذا الملف "من حيث البطء والمماطلة ودون تقديم أية حلول ناجعة, ورغم استمرار سوء أوضاع المعتقلين السياسيين السابقين, صحياً ومعاشياً, ورغم معاناتهم السابقة من عقوبة الاعتقال السياسي, ومن ثم عقوبة التجريد المدني والحرمان من العودة إلى العمل ومن ثم صعوبة تأمين لقمة العيش", كما ذكر بيان أصدرته ثلاث منظمات حقوقية عن الاجتماع و نشره موقع " اخبار الشرق " الالكتروني .

وقال البيان, الذي حمل توقيع لجان "الدفاع والحريات الديمقراطية" و"حقوق الإنسان في سورية" و"المنظمة الوطنية لحقوق الإنسان" و"المنظمة العربية لحقوق الإنسان" التي حضر ممثلون عنها الاجتماع كمراقبين; إن الآثار السيئة جداً للاعتقال ظهرت على المعتقلين السابقين الآن في هيئة "أمراض مستعصية كالسرطانات وأمراض مزمنة قلبية وعصبية وهضمية وعينية وأمراض أخرى, ترافقت مع صعوبة تأمين العلاج والدواء بسبب الوضع المادي السيئ لأغلبية المعتقلين السياسيين السابقين".

وحسب البيان الذي وصل إلى أخبار الشرق فإن "كل ذلك ترافق مع غياب أية مساعدة من قبل الجهات الحكومية السورية رغم المطالبات العديدة برفع آثار الاعتقال وعودة الناس إلى أعمالهم ووظائفهم, مع التعويض المادي عن فترة الاعتقال السابقة".

وأكدت المنظمات الحقوقية الثلاث التي راقبت الاجتماع على "شرعية وأهمية مطالب المعتقلين السياسيين السابقين", متوجهة إلى الحكومة السورية "من أجل العمل على طي هذا الملف وإلغاء عقوبة التجريد المدني والآثار المترتبة عليها حتى بعد انتهاء فترة التجريد, والتعويض المادي للمعتقلين, وإعادة من كان موظفاً إلى وظيفته, وإيجاد آلية مناسبة وسريعة من أجل تقديم المساعدة المطلوبة والعلاج والدواء".

يُشار إلى أن معاناة الاعتقال السياسي في سورية تعود إلى أواخر السبعينات, وكثير من المعتقلين السياسيين الذين أُفرج عنهم على دفعات خلال عقد التسعينات من القرن العشرين وبعد عام ,2000 يعانون من الحرمان من حق العمل بسبب تجريدهم من حقوقهم المدنية, كما يعانون من الأمراض بسبب التعذيب وسوء المعاملة خلال اعتقالهم الذي وصل في كثير من الحالات إلى نحو ربع قرن في أقسام الاعتقال السياسي في السجون السورية وهي معروفة بسوء أحوالها.

[flamenguita]

Originally Posted by lf rabieh

نشرت المنظمة الوطنية لحقوق الإنسان في سورية على موقعها الالكتروني امس ثلاثة تقارير عن وضع الحريات السياسية والمساجين والمعتقلين في سورية.. وفي ما يلي بعض أبرز ما ضمته التقارير:

أحكام محكمة أمن الدولة للعام 2006: 79 حكماً يبلغ مجموعها 700سنة فقط .

200 معتقل لبناني في سورية بعضهم منذ 30 سنة, بينهم عدد كبير من العسكريين اعتقلوا في الثمانينات, وعدد من العسكريين اعتقلوا في مطلع التسعينات. وهنالك قسم منهم "خطفته حركة "أمل" وحُوِّل" إلى السوريين.

This is simply outrageous. Where is this so called gvt that should be taking care of this file? for how long the mothers should suffer the losses and live in despair? They shout anti-syrians bashing all the time? eno they can't move their a*** and file an international lawsuit against the syrian gvt in the UN? Walla bas they are heroes in the tribunal sherade and hariri saga? Walla and even if i hate the syrian regime so much and despite it , if GMA should go there and get the detainees back, i am with him to go for this matter only, people, this is not a political issue, this is a humanitarian one, somebody is this shitty gvt or parliament should put this file in front of every other files. For me, this isssue is more important than the tribunal, than the gvt, than all the other cases.

I hope that they realise we have brothers and issters over there who need to be saved from those syrian tyrans.

[Ghnadine]

I signed and also sent it to my friends to sign as well thanks guys for this.

[Jean]

LEBANON-SYRIA: Families of missing detainees in Syrian prisons demand action
tayyar.org/ IRIN

Lebanese activists are calling on the United Nations and the Lebanese government to increase pressure on Damascus to release final details of the whereabouts and fate of more than 600 Lebanese missing in Syrian jails since the 1970s.
As a sit-in protest in front of UN House in Beirut by the families of the missing detainees enters its third year, activists are calling on the UN to consider the missing prisoner cases as part of the implementation of a series of Security Council resolutions that have demanded Syria respect Lebanon's sovereignty.

"Just as the UN is investigating all the assassinations in Lebanon since the killing of [former Prime Minister] Rafik Hariri, so we should have an independent international investigation into the cases of the missing prisoners," Ghazi Aad, chairman of Lebanese NGO Support for Lebanese in Detention and Exile, or 'Solide', told IRIN.

"This issue is beyond the Lebanese authorities and they have failed to do their duty towards their citizens."
An estimated 17,000 people went missing over the course of Lebanon's ruinous, 15-year-long civil war, in which Syria intervened in 1976 – a year after the war began - becoming de facto ruler of the country after the war's end in 1990.

Since the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon under UN resolution 1559 in April 2005, Solide has registered 643 prisoners believed to have disappeared in Syrian jails.

Aad and other activists are urging the UN to consider Syria's implementation of 1559 – which called for the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Lebanon – to be incomplete until Damascus provides details of missing Lebanese prisoners it is believed to be holding.

In the past, Syrian-controlled Lebanese governments denied the existence of Lebanese prisoners in Syria. In 1995, Beirut even issued a law declaring anyone who disappeared during the civil war as officially dead.

Syria has also denied on several occasions having Lebanese detainees in its prisons. But in 2000, it released a number of Lebanese captives several years after their abductions from Lebanon.

'Hurry up'

In the last picture Violette Nassif has of her son Johnny, he is wearing a sweater that reads simply: 'Hurry up'.

The image has haunted her for the 17 years that have passed since the young corporal in the Lebanese army was taken to a prison in Damascus, along with an estimated 150 other soldiers, after Syria defeated the Lebanese army in 1990.

Tears stream down Violette's face as she recalls her years of desperate effort to first find out if her son, who would now be 34, is still alive, and then to try and bring him home to Lebanon.

"After Johnny disappeared in 1990, I looked for him in morgues, in hospitals and in prisons for weeks. Finally, some friends in Syria told me he had been transferred to Damascus," said Violette, standing outside UN House in Beirut.

The now elderly mother said that in November 1990, a month after her son's disappearance, a Lebanese army officer gave her a telegram stating that Johnny and five others Lebanese were not dead, but that they had indeed been imprisoned in Syria.

Four years later, Violette at last managed to visit her son in Damascus' central prison. Two years later, she saw him again for the last time. But in 2001, a Lebanese detainee released from Syria told Violette that he had been in the same prison as Johnny and that her son was still alive.

That hope keeps Violette going through her daily sit-in, demanding news that never comes.

"The government has abandoned us so we must have an independent international investigation. We have been in this camp for two years now. Are they waiting for us to die as well? How can they not bother to search for their missing soldiers?" she asked.

Syrian officials have said they would launch their own investigation into the whereabouts of nearly 800 Syrians they say have disappeared in Lebanon.

"The Lebanese crimes against Syrian citizens were mostly motivated by political hatred, with an aim to divide Lebanon into smaller states loyal to Israeli governments," Syrian MP Faysal Kalthoum, who heads the National Committee for Syrian Disappeared in Lebanon, told the state-run Tishreen newspaper last year.

Lebanese MP and member of the Parliamentary Human Rights Committee Ghassan Mkheyber said last week the committee would investigate all the cases of Lebanese who have gone missing in Syria, Israel and Libya.

"It's about time we all came around to this humanitarian and moral issue so that we can uncover the truth about who's still alive and who's not," he told IRIN.

[Jean]

someone sent me this e-mail today , after he signed the petition



The way to Golgotha, from Lebanon to the Syrian prisons
Testimony of a liberated Lebanese prisoner
I am a Lebanese citizen born in Beirut, arrested by the Syrian occupation
forces in 1991. I spent five years in the Syrian Mazzeh prison. Hereunder
Is my testimony to the Lebanese, Arab and international public opinions in
order to reveal what the Lebanese face in brutal coercion and terrorism
unequalled even in the worst films of terror and the nazi and fascist
concentration camps.
I hope this testimony will find its way to the Lebanese, Arab and
international media in order to spur international organizations and
Ministries of Foreign Affairs to intervene and liberate the hundreds of
Lebanese prisoners subject to daily torture in the Syrian prisons only
because they demand Lebanon\'s freedom, independence and sovereignty.
I also hope the leaders of the Free World will read my testimony and that
it will prompt them to intervene for the liberation of Lebanese political
prisoners in Syria and ending the Syrian occupation of Lebanon and the
removal of its yoke from his people in distress who are governed by a gang
of yes-men under Syrian control.

My readers will forgive me for not revealing my name because I am still
living in Lebanon and wish to avoid being arrested again and \"skinned
alive\", as Ghazi Kanaan, the chief of the Syrian Mokhabarat (Secret
Service) in Lebanon, threatened me before liberating me.
My way to Golgotha began as I was going to work in my private car. When I
left the car before my office, a bunch of armed men surrounded me pointing
their Kalashnikovs to my face. They introduced themselves saying: \"Don\'t
move or say anything. We are from the Syrian Mokhabarat and you are under
arrest.\"

No sooner had their chief stopped speaking than two of his men rushed upon
me and placed a black bag over my head and handcuffed me. They then threw
me in the trunk of the car and sped away.

I took to wonder what they wanted from me, a retired soldier from the
Lebanese Army since about two years with no military activity since then,
except being a member of a local society for the promotion of our region
and the living conditions of its inhabitants. As for my political
inclinations they consist in opposing Syrian occupation to our country, as
is the case of most of my countrymen. I am also active as a partisan of
General Michel Aoun in the two Metn districts. I soon got my answer, since
the car stopped and my kidnappers retrieved me from the trunk of the car
and pushed me, handcuffed and my head still in the black bag, down a long
stairs to a moist and mouldy underground cell, where I could smell the sea.

I immediately realized that I was detained in the notorious Hotel Beau
Rivage, transformed by the Syrian Mokhabarat into a Beirut central prison
and Mokhabarat Head Quarters, headed by Colonel Rustom Ghazaleh and his
henchmen.

The blows, kicks and curses did not stop since I was retrieved from the car
and until I reached the black cell measuring 1.50 cm long by 80 cm wide.
They hollered all the way curses on the Lebanese, saying in the Syrian
accent: \"We want to **** the greatest Lebanese. The greatest Lebanese is no
better than my shoe. Who do you think you prostitutes are to oppose us?\" As
well as other hair raising curses.

They then threw me in the cell that is more like a tomb. A couple of hours
later, the door opened and the henchmen came in, put the black bag again
over my head and pushed me before them through the corridor separating the
cells up to the inquisition room, where they sat me on a metal chair
specially designed for the inquest. They cursed the Lebanese and the
Maronite Patriarch Mar Nasrallah Sfeir, saying he was senile and stupid.

They left no Christian leader without cursing him, saying: \"You,
prostitutes, do not want the Syrians? We shall settle accounts with you! By
God, we shall skin you alive?\"

A little later, silence fell in the room upon the entry of some
higher-ranking elements as I inferred from the henchmen who addressed them
as \"sir\".

The henchmen undressed - or rather tore off my clothes - while I was still
handcuffed and the black bag over my head. Thereupon, they showered me with
very cold water and fell upon me, boxing and beating me with batons.

Bleeding from my nose and mouth, I couldn\'t count the blows I received, and
I couldn\'t see where the blows were coming from since the dirty black bag
was absolutely opaque. I felt like a cat in a bag.

Accusations of gathering information on the Syrian Army in my region on
behalf of Israel fell upon me from all sides. And every time I denied the
accusations, they became furious and redoubled the blows. This procedure of
rotation between interrogation and return to the cell continued until I
lost all sense of space and time. I learned that this lasted for three days
from my torturers and the investigators when they informed me that I was to
be transferred to Anjar for further investigation after the three days of
preliminary investigation in the \"Beau Rivage prison\".

We were a group of nine detainees from various Lebanese regions when we
were placed on a truck, our heads in bags, handcuffed and with our feet
tied. The cold was intense and it was raining heavily as we left Beirut. We
knew that we had reached Dahr El-Baydar - the pass in the western mountain
chain separating the coast from the Beqaa - when our tortured members
shivered from cold and the pain in our open wounds.

We reached the Anjar penitentiary in the Beqaa valley, which is the central
penitentiary upon which are sent detainees from Beirut, the South, the
Mountain and the North, before transferring them to Syrian prisons.

Originally, the Anjar prison was a stable for horses that was requisitioned
by the Syrians upon invading Lebanon and transformed into a vast prison
without alteration other than converting the horseshoeing room into a
torture chamber, fitted with the most sophisticated instruments of torture.

The Anjar prison is not very large because it serves only, as I already
said, a grouping center for the detainees who were either liberated and
returned home, or transferred to the prisons of terror inside Syria.

The chief of Syrian military intelligence, General Ghazi Kanaan commands
personally the Anjar prison, his assistant is General Adnan Balloul,
nicknamed the \"Beast\". He is seconded by Lieutenant Sleiman Salameh who
commands the Alaouite investigation team who are constantly thirsty for
Lebanese blood.

In Anjar, they lined us up before a wall and removed the bags from our
heads in order to enable General Ghazi Kanaan to examine our faces closely.

He did in fact come up to us and looked at each of us individually, asking:
\"Who is this one?\" A Moukhabarat officer, carrying a list gave our name.
Kanaan passed us in review for about a quarter of an hour before
pronouncing a political speech saying: \"Anyone in Lebanon who speaks a word
against Syria shall be skinned alive [the words skin alive are the most
used by the Syrians against the Lebanese]. We shall transfer you forthwith
to Syria where we shall see what you know, and I advise you to tell us
everything, thereby saving yourselves suffering. Otherwise, you will never
return to your relatives in Lebanon again?\"

Kanaan made a long speech of which I don\'t remember much since it was such
a long time ago. I remember that one of the detainees tried to speak, but
one of the Moukhabarat henchmen fell upon him hitting him with the haft of
his gun. They covered our heads again with bags and put us back in a truck
on our way to Syria.

\"Whoever enters is lost, and whoever leaves is reborn\" is the slogan
written at the entrance of the Mazzeh prison, or of the Palestinian
investigation branch affiliated to the Syrian Army secret service. This
prison is the reception center entered by thousands of Lebanese who were
unheard of since.

We were nine in number coming from various Lebanese regions. They brought
us down from the truck and removed the bags from our heads and lined us up.

In the prison courtyard, the Syrian colonel Munir Abrass, head of
investigation in the Palestinian branch, received us. About 20 soldiers
carrying batons and whips that stared at us with eyes gleaming with hatred
surrounded him, as if we were enemies since a long time or Israeli
soldiers. When the truck and its escorting Moukhabarat car left, the
soldiers of Abrass surrounded us and started beating us without
preliminaries while cursing us and shouting: \"We shall **** you and crush
the biggest head under our shoe?\" followed by a long series of curses
denoting a latent hatred for everything Lebanese. It was as if they
regarded the Lebanese as insects that must be eradicated for the welfare of
Syria and its glory?

The round of beating stopped and we huddled together, bleeding from every
part of our bodies. It was already night in Damascus and very cold. I will
never forget that night all my life. We were praying all the saints and
prophets for mercy, but there was only deaf ears. Voracious wolves are more
merciful to their game than the Syrian torturers. A few moments later, they
turned upon us jets of ice-cold water. I don\'t know if their intention was
to wash us up. At any rate, after years spent in the Mazzeh prison I found
out that this was the standard procedure of receiving prisoners, especially
if they were an important bunch like us.

They put the bags again over our heads and transferred us to solitary cells
that are very dark rooms, some 40 meters underground of I believe 80 cm.
width by 180 cm. long in which the detainee cannot stand. Its door was of
iron with a small window opening from the exterior through which the jailer
presented us what they called \"food\".

General Mazhar Fares, the chief of the Palestine section and his henchmen
were responsible for questioning me. They used to transfer me daily from
the solitary cell to the investigation room with the black bag over my
head. When I reached the middle of the room the bag was removed and I could
see Fares sitting on a chair smoking a cigar or drinking a cup of coffee
with the henchmen standing all around him. He usually started his
investigation with a flow of curses against the Lebanese and accused us of
collaborating with Israel, after which the beating would start without
other preliminaries.

Words cannot fully represent what I suffered in the Syrian jail:
They whipped me and flogged me with a scourge that is a terrible instrument
of torture.

They pulled out my fingernails and my toenails.
They beat me on my genitals and impaled me with sharp instruments.
They applied electric shocks to my nose, my ears and my throat.
They burned me with cigars and cigarettes.
They sat me on the German chair (sic!).
They hanged me on a wheel.
They hanged me for nine days by a \"ghost\" winch with the black bag over my
head.
They placed salt on my wounds until I shrieked and fainted from pain and
was awakened by a jet of water, after which they resumed the beating.

I spent the 150 days of investigation in the solitary cell, or \"tomb\" as
the prisoners called it, during which I ate what was given me with my bare
hands like an animal as shown in films. I never knew what I ate except that
I could distinguish bread crumbs and a few olives.

Often, extenuated from suffering I slept long hours on end and stooled and
urinated in what was left of my clothes.

I will never forget the commandant of the Mazzeh prison, Captain Bassam
Hassan; weighing about 150 kgs he would pounce like a wolf, thrashing at
what was left of me. Prisoners later told me that he used to seek
inspiration for new ways of torture from horror films he saw.

Many Lebanese detainees died in Mazzeh under the torture inflicted by
Captain Bassam Hassan and his henchmen composed of 14 officers, of whom I
still remember Salah Zoghbi, Abdul Razzak Halabi, Bassam Mustapha, Housam
Succar and Mohamad Mufleh and a host of assistants and soldiers we called
\"torturers\".

Thereupon, they made me sign a document I did not know its contents.
They then allowed me to bathe. After which they shaved my hair and gave me
clothes similar to a Syrian soldier\'s uniform. Then one of the torturers
told me: \"We have given you a new name? This, henceforth, will be your name
until you leave here. Take good care not to pronounce your true name before
the other prisoners. You must forget it completely. Otherwise, we shall
return you to the \"tomb\". Understand?

Giving me a new name would mean, as far as the Syrian authorities are
concerned, that I am not present and never entered a Syrian jail. And this
is the situation of every Lebanese prisoner in Syrian jails whose their
parents ask about them in vain, since their names are not found on the
prison registers. It is necessary to oblige the Syrian authorities to
reveal all the true names.

They transferred me to a large prison cell containing a number of Lebanese
and Jordanian young men, all accused of endangering Syrian security! We
were about 25 prisoners in an underground cell of an area not exceeding 12
meters square. In summer we used to stifle from the heat and humidity, and
in winter we froze from the cold. Every now and then, they used to
administer to us, as a reminder, a round of beating.

Night in the Mazzeh prison was absolutely frightful and worse than in any
horror film: calm, then shrieks, even howls of pain from electric shocks or
other \"civilized\" means, specialty of the Syrian Mokhabarat, that cut your
breath. Then calm again, followed with worse shrieks and howls! Oh God will
this night never end! The Muslim prisoners would whisper Allah Akbar, while
we, the Christians, would murmur prayers to the Holy Virgin. Oh God will
this night never end!

I later learned that my parents tried to contact me in jail after having
localized me by bribing a Syrian officer. They came to the prison door but
Bassam Hassan, its commandant resolutely denied the presence of any
Lebanese in his prison. But this did not prevent him, along with other
Syrian Mokhabarat officers in Lebanon, headed by Ghazi Kanaan, Rustom
Ghazaleh and Adnan Balloul from blackmailing the parents of the prisoners.

We were about 150 Lebanese detained in the Mazzeh prison, yet they
constantly refused to admit the presence of any Lebanese. They even forced
us to speak with a Syrian accent in order to erase our trace.

There was no medical assistance in the Syrian jails or trials for most of
the detainees. As for the tribunal in charge of judging some of the
Lebanese, not all, it was the \"Third Field Court of the Syrian troops in
Lebanon\". This means that the Syrian Army was effectively imposing martial
law against the Lebanese despite the claim of the dummy regime in Beirut
that they form an authority, a State and a government. Shame!

As for our food, the daily menu consisted of potatoes, olives, burgul
(broken wheat), cauliflower. We used to spend our time in weeping and
telling stories of our countries and hearing news from freshly arriving
prisoners, while we dressed their wounds with water and rags from the
clothes left behind by departing inmates. The Syrian fugitives from
military service spending part of their sentences in one of the wings of
the Mazzeh prison were charged with our service. We used to call them the
\"fugitives\".

The prisoners who were at the point of death were sent to the Al-Mouassat
hospital that was close to the jail. There, the Military Police stood guard
over them. Once, one of the young men detained among us, accused of being a
partisan of the \"Lebanese Forces\" was severely tortured by electric shock
and returned to solitary confinement, but when signs of death were apparent
on him, they returned him to our midst in the large cell. His skin was
bluish, his mouth was frothy and blood was oozing from his ears and nose.

We told our jailers that he was dying and there was nothing we could do for
him. They answered: \"Let him die, the devil take him. May you all die!\"

We tried artificial respiration on him and wiping his face with water. His
respiration soon became rapid, he began to gasp then, practically
unconscious, he looked at our faces, smiled a sad smile and passed away. We
began to shout for help from the jailers. But when we told them that he
died, they cursed us, then came in and carried him away to the Al-Mouassat
hospital when it was too late. We later learned that he joined a long list
of Lebanese buried in mass graves in the vicinity of the Mazzeh prison
guarded by the Syrian Special Forces to prevent anyone from approaching
without special permission.

Nevertheless, the suffering in the Mazzeh prison is nothing compared with
the \"Sab\' Bahrat\" (Seven Seas) prison in Damascus held by the Moukhabarat
of the Syrian Air Force, or with the prison of Palmyra where hungry dogs,
snakes and rats as well as other hair-raising means worthy of horror films,
are used to torment the prisoners. The condemned to death are impaled.

Among the tidings of the Mazzeh prison where I spent five years of my life,
there is one regarding the former Lebanese deputy, the late Dr Farid Serhal
who was incarcerated when the Syrians abducted him in 1989. In addition to
light beatings, they forced him to clean the latrines and sweep the floors
in order to humiliate him because he was candidate for the Presidency of
the Lebanese Republic. They used to call him \"dog\".

As for Boutros Khawand, he is incarcerated in ward 601 of the Mazzeh
prison. He has become a shadow of himself due to coercion and torture.
I will never forget what the jailers did to torture a young soldier of the
Lebanese Army accused of military action against the Syrian occupation: He
was tied or crucified upon a heavy wooden device in the form of a cross -
because he was a Christian as the commander of the prison Bassam Hassan,
said - that they tied with ropes and cables then forced him to run in
circles, beating him as if he were a horse. Eventually, they raised him
with a winch and left him crucified for nine days in the sun. The blood
oozed from all his body, including his mouth and ears.

And when Bassel Assad died, the torturers pounded us like crazy bulls and
left us for a whole week without food because they thought we were pleased
with his death!

After spending five years in jail without judgment, as all the Lebanese
there, the Syrians decided to liberate me in answer to solicitations in my
favor. They brought me in a truck to Anjar where I sat on the floor
awaiting the arrival of General Ghazi Kanaan who told me point blank: \"I
hope you learned your lesson and I warn you that the next time, I will
pulverize your flesh and bones. You must learn that you and those who are
behind you shall live under our boots for ever and that your destiny is
Syria and there is nothing you can do about it!\"

Thereupon, they transferred me to the Anjar prison where Adnan Balloul and
his henchmen received me with a round of farewell beating before handing me
over to their puppet Lebanese Secret Service. Then, as if all the beating I
had received in five years were not enough, they fell upon me once more,
beating me savagely. I will never forget the sight of the chief of the
henchmen in Anjar, Colonel Slayman Salameh whom all those who have passed
through that prison regard as the most savage person on earth.

The Lebanese Secret Service received me at ten o\'clock PM. Upon my arrival,
the investigation chief in the prison of the Ministry of Defense, Imad
Kaakour, who wanted to interrogate me, started to beat me. I told him: \"Are
five years of torture in Syrian jails not enough? What more do you want
from me? I have forgotten to speak Lebanese. I have forgotten the names of
my parents. What more do you want from me?\"

My words fell on deaf ears. He was bent on beating me and on establishing
an investigation official report to present to his chief, Jamil Sayed. They
forced me to fingerprint a blank paper, then transferred me to the Military
Police jail in the Noura Palace, where I spent three days before one of the
pro-Syrian politicians intervened, telling them that five years are enough
to teach him, what more do you want from him? He has become the shadow of a
man!

And so was I liberated?

I still have to say that Hussein Taliss, the criminal who escaped from the
Roumieh prison, accused of the murder of the French Military Attaché and of
the attempt on the life of President Camille Chamoun in addition to the
explosion of tens of booby trapped cars in East Beirut during the war, is
at present one of the top investigators in the Mazzeh prison, in charge of
the investigation with Lebanese prisoners. He is at present in Damascus and
is active in the Syrian Moukhabarat, Lebanese section, on major security
operations in Lebanon. It is said that he is responsible of many crimes. He
resides with his family under a false identity in the Abou Remmaneh
quarter.

Message from the Mazzeh Prison, May 1st, ?2000

The testimony of the jailed Syrian journalist Nizar Nayyouf

On occasion of the UNESCO Day of World Press, and his award of the
international Prize of the Freedom of the Press, we hereby reproduce a
passage of the letter of the imprisoned Syrian journalist Nizar Nayyouf:

\"? One of the most momentous tragedies left behind by the criminal Lebanese
war concerns more than 18 thousand persons whose destiny is unknown by
their parents. But what no one knows, and that I shall reveal for the first
time to the public opinion, is that many of them have become skeletons in
the Syrian mass graves mentioned above (in the countryside of Damascus and
in the Districts of Homs, Hama and Idlib. But the cemetery of the Palmyra
prison is the most awful and vastest since it contains some 20 thousand
skeletons of prisoners liquidated in that prison by order of Rifaat Assad
and the commander of the Palmyra prison, Colonel Faysal Ghanem?). Most of
the Lebanese abducted to Syria by the Syrian official Services, have become
skeletons. Their number is about 2800. Accused of opposing the Syrians,
they were killed in cold blood? I call upon Mr. Kofi Annan, the UN
Secretary General and the responsible of the section of Human Rights, whom
I know are present in this hall, to proceed immediately to the appointment
of an international committee to investigate this matter in application of
the Geneva Convention before the Syrian Moukhabarat completely eradicate
these mass graves, which they have already effectively started. I also call
upon the Lebanese judiciary and the Public Prosecutors in the regime of the
upright and noble President Emil Lahoud, to proceed forthwith with their
investigations?\"

Pass this on to as many people as possible.

BY THE WAY I HAVE A BROTHER AND STILL THERE SINCE 14/06/1984 HIS NAME
MALEK YASSINE AGHA KALTHOUM

[flamenguita]

Source:tayyar.org
------------------

الأستاذ غازي عاد: "لتوسيع عمل لجنة التحقيق الدولية لتشمل قضية ومصير المفقودين اللبنانيين في السجون السورية"

استضاف "نادي الحرية" في الجامعة الاميركية جمعية المخطوفين والمفقودين اللبنانيين في السجون السورية "سوليد" في مبنى "الوست هول" في الجامعة ظهر اليوم، في حضور ممثلة السفارة الايطالية السيدة داينا لاتونون، القيادي في "التيار الوطني الحر" جبران باسيل، رئيس جمعية "سوليد" غازي عاد وعدد من اهالي المفقودين والمخطوفين في السجون السورية وحشد من الطلاب وصحافيين.

بدأ اللقاء بعرض شريط مصور عن المفقودين والمخطوفين وتاريخ اختفائهم او خطفهم،
ثم انشد الحضور النشيد الوطني، فكلمة "نادي الحرية" ألقاها الطالب بسام كرم اشار فيها الى "ان كل الجهود والوعود والمساعي لحل هذه القضية باءت بالفشل". وقال:
"اننا اليوم نكرم ممثلة السفير الايطالي نيابة عن الشعب الايطالي عربون شكر للقانون الذي اصدره البرلمان الايطالي والذي يصب في مصلحة قضية المفقودين والمخطوفين في لبنان".

ثم تم عرض فيلم وثائقي عن قضية المفقودين والمخطوفين اعدته محطة "سي.أن.أن" الاميركية للتلفزيون.
تلى ذلك اعلان مشاركة الطالبين سارة مراد وراندي نحلة في اعمال البرلمان الاورو- متوسطي للشباب في برلين.

واوضح مراد ونحلة انهما "سينقلان هذه القضية وسيعرضانها في البرلمان لكونها انسانية، في الدرجة الاولى، وتهم جميع اللبنانيين والسياسيين من كل الفئات والطوائف".

والقى مؤسس النادي في الجامعة ماريو شمعون كلمة اكد فيها "متابعة المسيرة حتى الافراج عن المعتقلين من السجون السورية". عاد

بعد ذلك، عرض عاد المراحل التي مرت بها قضية المفقودين والمعتقلين والاعتصام المفتوح الذي بدأته الجمعية في 11 نيسان 2005 امام مبنى الامم المتحدة("الاسكوا") وما نتج منه مرورا ب"عرض هذه القضية امام المحافل الدولية".

وطالب ب "ضرورة توسيع عمل لجنة التحقيق الدولية في قضية اغتيال الرئيس الحريري وضم قضية المعتقلين والمخطوفين في السجون السورية الى اعمال اللجنة، ومطالبة سوريا بإصدار لائحة بالمقابر الجماعية على الاراضي اللبنانية"، مؤكدا "مواصلة العمل للوصول الى تشكيل لجنة تحقيق دولية حول هذه القضية تتضمن معرفة مصير المفقودين احياء كانوا ام امواتا، ومعاقبة المجرمين وتعويض أهاليهم".

وقدم النادي درعا تقديرية الى البرلمان الايطالي تسلمته ممثلة السفير الايطالي.

وتسلم باسيل عريضة وقعها 243 طالبا من الجامعة تطالب ب"ضم هذه القضية الى لجنة التحقيق الدولية لايصالها الى المراجع المختصة".

واختتم اللقاء بعرض شهادات لمعتقلين سابقين في السجون السورية.

[flamenguita]

Source: tayyar.org
---------------------

باسيل سلم بيدرسون عريضة موقعّة من 334 طالبًا يناشدون فيها تشكيل لجنة تحقيق دولية لتتقصى مصير اللبنانيين المفقودين في السجون السورية

بناءً على رغبة من طلاب الجامعة الأميركية في بيروت لدى حضوري ندوة أقاموها في الذكرى الثانية لانسحاب جيش الاحتلال السوري من لبنان، عن مصير المفقودين اللبنانيين في السجون السورية، سلمت الممثل الشخصي للأمين العام للأمم المتحدة في لبنان السيد غير بيدرسون عريضة موقعّة من 334 طالبًا يناشدون فيها الأمين العام ورئيس مجلس الأمن وأعضاءه الـ 15 تشكيل لجنة تحقيق دولية لتتقصى مصير اللبنانيين المفقودين في السجون السورية والمنقولين إليها بطريقة غير شرعية إبّان احتلالها سوريا للبنان.

إننا في التيار الوطني الحر نضم صوتنا مجدداً إلى هؤلاء الطلاب وإلى أهالي المفقودين مشددين على أنّ الملف الخلافي مع سوريا لا يمكن أن يقفل من دون حل واضح لهذه القضية الإنسانية. ثم أنّ العلاقات لن تسوّى بين البلدين من دون معرفة الحقيقة كاملة عن مصير كل المفقودين، أحياءً كانوا أم أمواتاً.
إن العجز والتقصير اللذين امتاز بهما أداء الحكومتين اللبنانية السورية في معالجة هذا الملف لا يمكن أن يثنيانا عن متابعة هذه القضية ولا التخلي عنها بذريعة تسليمها إلى من تمادى في إهمالها على مدى عشرات السنين، وبما أن القضية هي قضية خلاف بين بلدين، وبما أن العادة رائجة اليوم على ضم كل جريمة سياسية تقع على أرض لبنان إلى ملف التحقيق الدولي الجاري في مقتل الرئيس الشهيد رفيق الحريري، ، وبما أنّ هذه الجريمة هي جريمة متمادية في الزمان حتى يومنا هذا وهي جريمة ضد الإنسانية، فإننا نطالب الأمم المتحدة بإيلاء هذه الجريمة الاهتمام نفسه الذي توليه للجرائم الأخرى