The Daily Star
BEIRUT: Around 200 people gathered in the town of Aley Saturday night to demonstrate against the apparent kidnapping of a Syrian activist who has been missing for over two weeks. Leading the demonstration was prominent Druze MP Akram Shehayeb.
The MP described Shibly Aisamy as "a political activist chief spent his life in the struggle for Pan-Arabism and Palestine, this man ended up looking for an identity, and ended up missing, we are looking for," according to a report by the NNA.He added that the community would work "on all political levels in the country to know the truth about what happened."
This is the second demonstration in support of the missing Syrian dissident. The first was an hour-long strike by local residents and businesses on May 31.
On May 26, Aisamy, 86, had gone to take a walk near his home in Aley, when he went missing, according to his friends and family. The activist and a founding Baath Party member under Syria’s late president Hafez al-Assad, defected in 1992. Aisamy had arrived in Lebanon from the United States, where he is a resident, on May 19.
A statement released by his family prior to the demonstration on June 10 said, “The sons of Shibli Aisamy appeal to the international, Arab and Lebanese publics, as well as humanitarian and civil rights groups, and Lebanese political and judicial authorities to immediately uncover the fate of our father,” the statement said.
Relatives of the elderly opposition member blamed the apparent abduction on “narrow conflicts aimed at settling political scores.”
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