MERSIN — The fate of more than 2,000 Syrians held in Lebanese prisons was on the table in Beirut on Monday, during the first visit by an official Syrian delegation to the neighboring country since the fall of the Assad regime late last year. 

Lebanese judicial and security officials said on Monday that two committees would be formed to decide the fate of Syrian prisoners, locate missing Lebanese nationals in Syria and define shared borders. The visit, originally scheduled for August 28, had been postponed last week. 

“Both sides reaffirmed the importance of enhancing brotherly relations between Syria and Lebanon, based on mutual coordination and cooperation,” said Mohammad Yaqoub al-Omar, head of the Consular Affairs Department at the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who attended the meeting.

Movement towards repatriating Syrians detained in Lebanon came too late for Osama al-Jaour, 39, who was laid to rest in his native Syrian city of al-Qusayr in mid-August. Al-Jaour died in Lebanon’s notorious, overcrowded Roumieh prison after his health deteriorated due to a lack of medical care. His funeral renewed calls for Syria’s authorities to act on behalf of those who remain.

Lebanese authorities detained al-Jaour in the border town of Arsal in 2015. A member of the Farouq Brigades—an armed Syrian opposition group—he was charged with terrorism. In 2019, Lebanon’s Military Court sentenced him to life imprisonment. 

As the years passed, al-Jaour’s health gradually worsened, affecting his mind and physical mobility. In 2024, he was transferred to the “Blue House,” the building reserved for people with mental illnesses inside Roumieh. It was there that he died, Omar Jamoul, a former Roumieh detainee who is also from al-Qusayr, told Syria Direct. 

Al-Jaour is one of 40 detainees who have died inside Lebanese prisons over the past two years “due to medical neglect,” Lebanese lawyer Muhammad Sablouh told Syria Direct. The country’s prisons are “on the verge of exploding, given the tragic situation inside and the state’s inability to provide food and medicine to the detainees,” he warned.

Relatives of detainees accused of terrorism—who number around 400 in total, including 170 Syrians—continue to stage sit-ins and appeal to the authorities on behalf of their loved ones. Most recently, several sit-ins were organized last Wednesday, including at Syria’s Jousiya border crossing with Lebanon, in which relatives of Syrian detainees demanded their release. At the same time, others—Lebanese and Syrians alike—protested in front of Roumieh prison in Lebanon.

On August 25, a group of Lebanese prisoners issued a statement laying out a series of proposed solutions to the humanitarian crisis inside the country’s prisons. This included reducing sentences by a third, releasing those held for more than a decade without trial—who make up more than 70 percent of prisoners, the group said—and transferring all Syrians to their country.

Each “year” of a prison sentence in Lebanon currently consists of nine months, following a 2012 parliamentary measure to reduce prison overcrowding. The government rejected a draft law in mid-July that would have further reduced the prison year from nine to six months. In mid-August, it also rejected a proposed law that would have granted an exceptional amnesty on humanitarian grounds, following the death of two Roumieh prisoners.  

Taking such measures is important to address “overcrowding, as the number of inmates in Roumieh has reached more than 4,000 while its capacity is 1,200,” lawyer Sablouh, who is also the director of the Cedar Center for Legal Studies, said. 

Most Syrians detained on terrorism charges are accused of participating in battles against the Lebanese army in Arsal in 2014. More than 152 people were charged in May 2016.

Mental and physical suffering

Detainees in Roumieh—especially in the first years of detention—were subjected to severe torture followed by deliberate medical neglect, Jamoul said. 

Over the last decade in Lebanon, several human rights organizations have documented how security branches (Military Intelligence, the General Security Directorate and Internal Security Forces) use severe beatings, electricity, suspension from the ceiling, stress positions and psychological torture such as threats or solitary confinement during interrogations.

Read more: Syrians tortured in Lebanese detention centers: A tale of impunity

Prisoners say the administration of Roumieh’s medical center blocks access to medication and delays transfers to hospitals. Lawyer Sablouh pointed to the case of one Syrian detainee who needed an open-heart surgery that would cost $7,500. His relatives tried to raise the money with the help of charities, but it took three months and the man died. 

Despite repeated deaths inside Roumieh, “the Lebanese state has not dared to open a single investigation,” Sablouh said, adding he has filed “complaints to the judiciary over some cases, to no avail.” He accused the judiciary of “failing to fulfill its duty,” and the government of “not being concerned with the detainees.” 

Detainees’ families are forced to cover the costs of their relatives’ medical care and food despite “EU support allocated to the Lebanese state for hosting Syrians,” he added. Similarly, “Spain donated $100,000 to install a solar energy system in Roumieh for hot water, yet prisoners still heat water in a primitive manner.”

Amina Harba’s brother, Hassan Harba, is detained in Roumieh prison and is in poor health. After participating in an 18-day hunger strike that lasted from February 11 until early March, he suffers from an immune deficiency, she told Syria Direct. In June, he contracted COVID-19, and had to be transferred to the hospital multiple times.

Harba is serving a life sentence in Roumieh due to a case of mistaken identity, his family and lawyer say. His name is similar to that of Hassan Younes Harba, also known as Abu Ali al-Wadi, who was killed in battles near Palmyra in Syria in 2015, and who was the real suspect sought by Lebanese authorities.

Lebanese lawyer Diyala Chehade and several witnesses have provided conclusive evidence of Harba’s innocence and identity—including the fact that the two men’s parents have different names—but he remains behind bars. A combination of poor physical and mental health has led Harba to lose around 15 kilograms while imprisoned, his sister said. 

Conditions inside Lebanese prisons, and especially Roumieh, take a mental toll. On July 3, Syrian detainee Muhammad Fawaz al-Ashraf, 40, died by suicide in the facility. The next day, Lebanese detainee Ali Awada, an elderly man, also died by suicide, reportedly in protest of authorities’ refusal to provide medication he needed. 

Alaa al-Hasiki, who has been imprisoned in Roumieh since November 2017, told Syria Direct he is suffering a “psychological collapse and nervous breakdown,” alongside other inmates, due to the news of deaths and suicides inside the prison. The question “when is our time to die” constantly runs through his mind, he said.

Obstructing transfers to Syria

While today Syrian detainees and their families are calling for them to be transferred to Syria, just over a year ago there was a different struggle. In April 2024—roughly eight months before the Assad regime fell—Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati agreed with his Syrian counterpart Hussein Arnous to coordinate the extradition of Syrian refugees and detainees from Lebanon.

At the time, Lebanon deported a number of refugees following their arrest in Lebanon, some of whom were immediately rearrested by Syrian authorities and later died under torture. Among them was Ahmad al-Haidar, who died on June 24, two months after his arrest in Syria. Ahmad al-Halli died in July 2024, one month after his arrest in Syria. 

Since the fall of the Assad regime last December, however, Lebanese authorities no longer turn over detainees to Syria’s new transitional government, led by Ahmad al-Sharaa.

The issue of Syrian detainees in Lebanon is “primarily a political file,” journalist and political researcher Siba Madwar told Syria Direct. Given tensions between the two countries, their fate could be “used to put pressure on Damascus regarding arranging its relationship with Hezbollah, or more specifically to reach security understandings granting Hezbollah members greater freedom of movement,” Madwar said. 

“Hezbollah is aware that closing this file for free and handing detainees to the Syrian state will be counted as a political victory [for Damascus], which does not serve the balance of power, internally and externally,” Madwar said. 

In late August, Qutaiba Idlibi, the head of US affairs at Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, attributed the delay in implementing the agreement with Lebanon to pressure exerted by Hezbollah, which he said was responsible for Syrians’ detention there. 

In May, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani said in a post on X that he had met with Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and discussed the need to urgently end the suffering of Syrians detained in Roumieh.

However, the matter requires “greater pressure than the Syrian government is currently exerting,” Madwar said. “Regional parties sponsoring the Syrian-Lebanese relationship must step in to push for a settlement that would remove the detainees from the contentious issues between the two countries.” 

In his 2024 statements, former Lebanese Minister of Interior Bassam Mawlawi said his country could not bear the pressure of Syrian refugees, including the 2,400 detainees making up 35 percent of the prison population.

With the fall of Assad, official Lebanese statements changed, as though Syrian detainees no longer constituted a crisis. Authorities stopped handing anyone over to Syria, Sablouh said, despite the previous “illegal” deportation of refugees and prisoners. “Lebanon wants to extract political gains from Syria through the detainees, as though they are mere numbers for bargaining,” he added.

Muhammad Hassan, the executive director of the Access Center for Human Rights (ACHR), said the issue of Syrian detainees in Lebanon “faces a set of obstacles, most notably the absence of a transparent legal mechanism for cooperation between Lebanon and the Syrian interim government,” not to mention Lebanese authorities’ handling of the file with a “security and political logic.” 

“While there is understandable caution today in dealing with the detainees, ignoring the change that has occurred in Syria and adhering to practices based on unlawful detention and discrimination cannot be legally justified,” Hassan told Syria Direct. “The real challenge lies in providing an environment that safeguards the rights of returnees and respects their humanity. Many returnees have been subjected to violence inside Syria recently.”

Syria Direct reached out to the head of the Office of Coordination at the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Abdulmoeen al-Dandal, to inquire about the status of efforts to resolve the detainees issue, but received no response by the time of publication. 

Nabil al-Halabi, a Lebanese lawyer and head of the Middle East Forum for Policies and Future Studies, said he expected that the issue would ultimately be “freed from political tug-of-war, as Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam is working with his team to arrange the file security-wise and legally, in preparation for transferring Syrian detainees back to their country.” 

Resolving the issue of Syrian prisoners does not require a general amnesty, al-Halabi explained. “It could be based on the 1991 Treaty of Brotherhood, Cooperation and Coordination between Lebanon and Syria, which can be amended by both parties to allow for prisoner exchanges, or by signing a judicial-security memorandum of understanding that requires the transfer of all Syrian prisoners to their country, except for those facing personal claims.” 

This report was originally published in Arabic and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.