International Red Cross Can't See Lebanese Prisoners in Syria

The International Committee of the Red Cross has declared that Syrian authorities have banned the All-Swiss ICRC delegates from entering Syrian jails, which rendered the humanitarian organization incapable of seeing Lebanese prisoners, An Nahar reported Wednesday. It said the Canadian ICRC office in Quebec made the announcement in response to a request by friends of Lebanese musicians Karam and Ziad Murqos to convey a letter to the two brothers in their Syrian jail. "We have received information that the ICRC is banned from entering Syrian prisons and because of this it is impossible for us to convey your letter to the two prisoners," the ICRC in Quebec told the letter senders, according to An Nahar. It said the Murqos brothers, of the town of Zekrit in the Metn district, were seized by Syrian troops in Beirut on Nov. 21, 1984 as they were heading to a recording studio in Western Beirut during the civil war. Lebanese violinist Elie Abu Nader was grabbed with them. According to data from humanitarian organizations, the Murqos brothers were first taken to the Syrian detention camp in the Lebanese Bekaa town of Anjar and then to the Sednaya prison in Syria, where they were tried by a Syrian army 'Kangaro court' with no defense attorneys. They were sentenced to 15 years imprisonment on a charge of collaboration with Israel. But the 15 years have passed without the two brothers being freed. Efforts by their family and friends to establish any sort of contact with the two brothers have been fruitless.