By Rania Abouzeid

Unconfirmed reports that Syrian army troops were battling each other were an indication of how divided the country is regarding dealing with political dissent. The Damascus regime's reputation for brutality is fearsome. Joseph Hallit knows all too well what may happen to the scores of Syrians snatched in recent weeks by a regime in Damascus that polices anti-government thoughts as much as actions. The doctor was one of thousands of Lebanese political prisoners locked away in a labyrinth of Syrian jails for their opposition — real or suspected — to Syria's political and military domination of its tiny neighbor, Lebanon.

Hallit completed his medical degree in Damascus and was nabbed from university just after graduating in 1992. He spent four of the eight years he was incarcerated in solitary confinement, languishing in a dark, dank windowless cell just big enough to stand up in, but not to stretch his legs. Still, he says Cell 16 was a refuge from the violent interrogations on the other side of the door. "I changed my perspective so that the opening of the door did not mean release," he says, "the closing of it did."

The 50-year old (who jokes that he is 42 because he doesn't count those eight years as part of his life) was eventually released in 2000 as part of a general amnesty by the new young "reformist" Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, who had just inherited the post after the death of his father Hafez. That same president is now trying to crush opponents — real and suspected — as he seeks to survive the most serious threat to his authoritarian regime since he assumed power.

Hallit bears two pale, wide scars, about three centimeters long on the inside of each upper arm, just below his armpits. "They're from the German chair," he says casually, referring to a torture device that suspends a prisoner on the empty metal frame of a chair, placing all of his weight on the upper arms, while stretching his spine to near breaking point. "My flesh was torn so deeply I could see the nerve," the doctor says, referring to the scars.
As Hallit watches the unrest across the border, he fears for Syrians recently rounded up by their government, as well as Lebanese detainees still being held. Damascus denies such Lebanese detainees exist and successive Lebanese governments (both pro- and anti-Syrian) have abandoned efforts to learn the truth. "I know what they will go through," Hallit says. Some may eventually be released, but the fate of others, like so many detainees in Syria, may never be known. Ghazi Aad, co-founder of the Support of Lebanese in Detention and Exile, fears an even worse fate for the Lebanese detainees. "I'm afraid they'll just kill them all," he says. "After all, they've never acknowledged their presence there, so why not get rid of them?"

The topic of detainees is perhaps one of the most sensitive between the two neighbors, an issue with a long, tortuous history. Syrian troops first entered Lebanon in 1976 as a peacekeeping force, but soon became a party to the bloody civil conflict that raged from 1975 to 1990. Damascus initially sided with Christian parties against leftist, pro-Palestinian groups, but then switched allegiances as the Lebanese state fractured along ever-changing lines. Syrian troops and intelligence officers detained Lebanese with political or military allegiances to anti-Syria groups during and after the war, often with the help of the pro-Syrian authorities in Beirut, human rights groups say. The detainees were from across the country's many religious divides, reflecting Syria's shifting enmity with the country's sectarian groups.

Still, the issue of Lebanese prisoners was taboo until the 2005 assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri, which at the time, was widely blamed on Damascus. Anger over the murder unleashed a torrent of anti-Syrian sentiment in Lebanon that helped propel the Syrian military back across its border. It briefly brought anti-Syrian politicians to power in Beirut.

Aad, the activist, says his organization had 280 detainees on its list before Hariri's murder in February, a figure that jumped to 640 just a month later as families came forward with names. The number is now at 575 (the Syrians released a group in 2009), although Aad says it is much higher. "I know of many cases where families are still visiting detainees in Syria, but they won't say it publicly," he says. "They are afraid to talk about it because they are afraid to lose those visiting rights."

But apart from the testimony of family members still secretly visiting their loved ones and from former detainees, there is precious little documentation to prove the existence of these prisoners, largely, according to activists, because the Syrians retain all paperwork. That's something that Lebanese authorities have used to avoid the issue. "What really upsets you is that your government is against you, not supporting you, because it's too sensitive an issue to raise with the Syrians," says Sonia Eid, a diminutive mother of four. Eid's son Jihad was detained along with the rest of his Lebanese Army unit by Syrian troops on October 13, 1990 after they overran his barracks in Beirut in one of the last battles of the Lebanese civil war.

Jihad was just 20 when he was captured. His mother says she knows he is in a Syrian jail, because she saw him in one back in 1991. That was a high point in Eid's fight to free her son. So too was 2005, when Eid was hopeful that the issue of detainees would finally be resolved after the Syrian military withdrawal. "But we were disappointed, because nothing happened," she says.

Aad says he feels betrayed by the anti-Syrian Lebanese politicians, who he says talked a good talk, but ultimately, did nothing for the families. For the past six years his organization has maintained a sit-in in a garden in front of UN House in the center of Beirut, in the hope that somebody will help them. In 2005 the garden was full of tents. Now there is a solitary canvas structure which has taken on a depressing air of permanence, complete with a fridge, TV and microwave oven.

Until last year, Eid was a member of a hardcore group that would take turns sleeping overnight in the tent, to maintain the protest. But 20 years of searching for her son has taken a toll on the 60-something diabetic woman with high blood pressure. She no longer spends any time in the tent. Still, for the first time in years, she is hopeful. "Now, with this chaos in Syria, it might be an opportunity for us to finally find out what happened to Jihad," she says from her home on the outskirts of Beirut. "I just need to know," she says. "One way or the other, I need to know."

Hallit has a more textured perspective. If Assad survives this uprising, the doctor fears the Syrian and Lebanese detainees will continue to spend years suffering behind bars, their fates unknown to the rest of the world. But if Assad falls, he declares, "they'll be heroes."