March 12, 2010 - The Daily Star - Lebanon: Lebanese man becomes first to sue former Syrian jailers

Lebanese man becomes first to sue former Syrian 'jailers'

By Agence France Presse (AFP)

BEIRUT: A Lebanese man has filed an unprecedented lawsuit against five Syrians, including four officers, that he said kidnapped, tortured and jailed him in Syria, his lawyer told AFP on Thursday.
Elias Tanios was kidnapped from Lebanon by Syrian soldiers in 1992 and taken to Syria where he was held in jail until his release in 2000, Sleiman Labbous said.
“Two days ago he filed a suit in a Beirut court against four officers responsible for his detention and his torture during his years in jail,” the lawyer said.
Tanios, a former member of the Lebanese security services, also filed a suit against a Syrian man, who also holds Lebanese nationality, who allegedly “denounced him.”
The attorney refused to give a motive for the arrest and detention of his client but insisted that he was “innocent.”
The suit is the first of its kind to be filed against Syrian authorities by a Lebanese once held in Syria – which ruled Lebanon politically and military for nearly three decades until April 2005.
Syria rounded up hundreds of Lebanese during its occupation of Lebanon, holding them in detention either in Lebanese or in Syrian jails.
Hundreds of Lebanese who went missing during that time are still believed to be held in Syrian prisons. Families of the missing have been pressing the Syrian authorities to free them or to report on their fates.
Families have been demanding for years their release, as well as a probe into the fate of hundreds of their kin who went missing during Syria’s domination of Lebanon.
In October 2008, Lebanon and Syria established their first ever diplomatic ties after decades of strained relations between the two neighbors.
The defendants named in the lawsuit include Jameh Jameh, a Syrian officer who was in charge of an infamous detention and torture center in Beirut in the 1990s, the lawyer said.
Also named was Barakat al-Ash, who ran the Saydnaya prison, one of Syria’s largest jails, as well as officers Dib Zeitouni, Kamal Youssef, and Ghassan Alloush who allegedly denounced Tanios to the Syrian authorities. – AFP