While Lebanon celebrates becoming “the first Arab country in the Israeli-Arab struggle to close its detainee file,” as Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah put it in a July 3 speech, many Lebanese still languish in Syrian prisons.

The exact number of prisoners and detainees is not known, and Syrian authorities have a history of keeping silent on the issue. During the civil war, approximately 17,000 people disappeared. Following the war, the arrest and disappearance of those expressing opposition to Syria’s continued presence was common.

While estimates exist as to the number of Lebanese in Syria’s prisons, their accuracy is difficult to judge. For example, in 1998, the names of 121 Lebanese prisoners were announced by Damascus, but only a handful had been on an Amnesty International list of suspected detainees.

“We have a list of 640 names of people who have been seen in Syrian prisons, either by their parents, or by former detainees,” Ghazi Aad told NOW Lebanon last year. In 1990, Aad founded Support for Lebanese in Detention and Exile (SOLIDE), a human rights group.

However, Damascus does not even acknowledge those prisoners whose families can prove they are in Syria.

Human Rights Watch Researcher Nadim Houry said Lebanese detainees in Syria generally fall into two categories.

“[There are] people that we know are in Syria – their family saw them in Syria, so there’s no doubt about that – and then there are the disappeared, where in some cases there is evidence they may have been transferred to Syria, and in other cases we just don’t know,” with gray areas in between, he said.

SOLIDE, on the other hand, classifies Lebanese in Syrian prisons into four groups: 1) those who were taken by the Syrian forces during the civil war, (2) soldiers who were abducted by the Syrians when they defeated then-Army Commander General Michel Aoun in 1990, (3) those who were taken by pro-Syrian militias between 1991 and 1992 when the Christian militias disarmed and (4) those who were kidnapped by Syrian intelligence after 1992 on account of their political views and activities.

A number of commissions to investigate the issue have been established in the past by former Prime Ministers Selim Hoss and Rafik Hariri but have had little impact. Now that establishing diplomatic relations between Lebanon and Syria appears to be in the offing, some politicians are bringing the issue back to the fore.

“Solving the matter of the Lebanese who are missing or detained in Syrian jails is a precondition to redressing relations with Syria,” Michel Mouawad, the Coordinator of the March 14 Secretariat, said on Tuesday.

Families of those whose whereabouts remain unknown or unacknowledged, however, have long been vocal on the issue. Since 2005, relatives of the disappeared have been camped out in front of the office building of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) in Beirut, demanding answers.

That same year, then-Prime Minister Najib Mikati established the Joint Syrian-Lebanese Commission to investigate the matter, and while it continues functioning, tangible results are few and far between.

“What’s clear is that the Syrian side has not really provided much valuable information,” Houry said.

Given this lack of support, some are calling for international intervention to force compliance.

“We therefore would like to see the Lebanese government address this issue by demanding the UN Security Council form an international investigation commission,” Marie Daunay, president of the Lebanese Center for Human Rights, said in an e-mail message.

Houry echoed similar sentiments. He also said a problem remains in that a full accounting of all those killed and buried in Lebanon during the war has never been given. The Syrians, he argued, use this to skirt the issue of who they are still holding.

As diplomatic relations between Lebanon and Syria proceed and prisoners from Israel are welcomed home, this issue should be a top priority.