Syrian refugees arrested, detained by regime after deportation from Lebanon

Two Syrian refugees were arrested and detained by Syrian regime authorities upon their forced return to the country from Lebanon, as Lebanese authorities last week began implementing controversial deportation plans.

According to the news outlet Suwayda 24, Lebanese security forces raided the residence of the two young men – 31-year-old Nader Nader and 35-year-old Ihab Nader – and arrested them along with a group of other Syrians living in the same area.

According to an anonymous source from the Nader family who spoke to the outlet, the men were detained for several hours before being transferred to a place near the Al-Masnaa border crossing. Within minutes, a patrol of the Syrian security services arrived and arrested them, taking them to a detention centre in the capital Damascus. Two other men from their same province of Sweida in Syria’s south were released.

The two Naders are reportedly wanted for military reserve service – a common cause of the arrest and detention of refugees and returnees – and had been living in the Lebanese municipality of Qornayel for several years, where they had been trying to work. They had no legal residency papers, however, leaving them vulnerable arrest and deportation by Lebanese authorities.

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According to the outlet, mediators have intervened and been attempting to secure the release of the two men, with their relatives reportedly warning of an escalation in the situation if they are not released. It is likely that relatives will be forced to pay hefty bribes to Syrian officials or prison authorities in order to gain their freedom, as is usually the case in what has been dubbed by activists and regime opponents as a system of kidnapping and extortion by ransom.

Last week, Lebanese authorities began deporting at dozens of Syrian refugees from the country following a mass round up and detention of them in the country’s prisons, with Suwayda 24 citing an anonymous Lebanese source with knowledge on the matter as saying that the Lebanese military has arrested over 100 Syrians since the beginning of April.

The move seems to be the implementation of long-held deportation plans which were announced last year, with the intention to return 15,000 Syrian refugees every month back to Syria.

Despite Lebanese authorities – as well as some other countries in the region and across the world – claiming that Syria is now safe due to the ongoing civil war having subsided and the Bashar al-Assad’s regime having recaptured most of the country, Syrian security services continue to monitor, arrest, detain, and torture returnees.

That risk of harm, according to rights groups and activists, makes it unsafe for refugees to be returned to Syria, and especially to regime-held areas.