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BEIRUT (AFP) - The Syrian authorities have released a Lebanese Islamist leader after he had spent 15 years in a jail near Damascus, Sunni Islamists said here Tuesday. Sheikh Hashem Minqara, the former "emir" of the Islamic Unification Movement (IUM) for the al-Mina or port area of Tripoli, Lebanon, was released Monday from Sayednaya jail, according to Al-Mustaqbal newspaper, which belongs to former prime minister Rafik Hariri. The paper published a statement from the sheikh in which he said he had been freed and taken to Anjar (in the Bekaa region) where the headquarters of the intelligence services for Syrian troops deployed in Lebanon are based. "A car with a driver sent by the Public Works Minister Najib Miqati then took me to Tripoli," in northern Lebanon, he added. He thanked Miqati "whose efforts secured my release," he said. The sheikh could not be contacted at his home in Tripoli; his entourage said he was not available. According to the Lebanese press, Miqati has good relations with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who must have given his agreement for the release. Minqara was arrested with dozens of other mainly Sunni Islamists by Syrian troops when they entered Tripoli in 1985 and ended the control there of the IUM, an Islamic movement supported by the PLO. The families of some of those kidnapped have been able to trace their relatives in Syria where they were jailed, often several years later, but other anti-Syrian leaders of that time, like Khalil Akkawi, have not reappeared. The IUM has continued to exist under Syrian authority but without the same influence as before. The current leader, Sheikh Bilal Shaaban, told the Lebanese daily An-Nahar "the release of all our brothers [Lebanese Islamists] jailed [in Syria] should come in the next few days." He did not say how many were in Syrian prisons. Solida, a group working for the release of Lebanese prisoners in Syria, praised Minqara's release and called for Syria to free "all the Lebanese incarcerated in Syria." "This unfortunate chapter in Lebanese-Syrian relations can only be closed if Syria admits the presence of numerous Lebanese in its prisons and supplies a complete and official list to the Lebanese authorities and Human Rights organizations," said Solida. It said that when this had been done, the Lebanese authorities "should do their duty to their citizens, and not act to stifle the issue as they have up to now." The group pointed out that both Syria and Lebanon had in the past "energetically denied" that Minqara was being held in Syria. A Lebanese government commission concluded last month that some 2,000 Lebanese who disappeared during the 1975-90 civil war, during which both Syria and Israel sent in armies, were dead. But Amnesty International said in April 1998 that 228 Lebanese, mainly members of Christian parties and Islamic movements opposed to Syria, were still in jail in Syria. The Syrian authorities had released 121 Lebanese in March of the same year, following a request from the former Lebanese president Elias Hrawi. |
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