BEIRUT — A top Lebanese intelligence official said Wednesday the
country would not deport six Syrians back to their war-torn homeland, after
they were detained last month for smuggling themselves across the border.
اضافة اعلان
The army reported on August 28 that it had arrested six Syrians for
"entering Lebanon illegally" and had referred them to the General
Security apparatus.
Activists have raised the alarm over their fate, especially after four of
them were detained near the Syrian embassy.
"General Security will not deport the six Syrians and will work to
regularize their legal status," the agency's chief official Abbas Ibrahim
told AFP.
The six hail from Syria's southern province of
Daraa, where regime forces
have in recent weeks been pushing to retake every inch of the region from
holdout rebels.
A brother of one of the detainees told rights group Amnesty International
that he had received a call on August 26 to collect his passport at the
embassy, then stopped responding to his messages after picking up the
document.
Amnesty earlier Wednesday warned of "grave risks awaiting them in
Syria" if the six were sent back.
Its statement came a day after it published a report in which it warned that
"no part of Syria is safe to return to."
It said dozens of Syrians who had returned home from abroad had been subject
to detention, enforced disappearance, torture or rape by Syrian intelligence
forces, including children.
Lebanon, which is grappling with an economic crisis, says it hosts some 1.5
million Syrians, including more than 850,000 registered as refugees with the
United Nations.
The Mediterranean country started repatriating Syrian refugees in May 2019
from its soil, in a move that has repeatedly been condemned by human rights
groups.
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