In the winter of 2003, when the Baathist regime in Baghdad was about to collapse on the eve of the American invasion, Saddam Hussein's henchmen carried out the elimination of thousands of political prisoners that were held in his prisons. Most were executed and buried in mass graves for fear that they may live to tell their stories. After the defeat of the regime, only the haunted rooms and torture chambers of the regime's prisons and dungeons could tell what those stories may have been during more than three decades of Baathist rule in Baghdad.

With the prospects for a makeover of the political landscape in the region, hopes are running high that human rights will become a central tenet of governance in that part of the world, along with democracy and institutions. Unfortunately, the immediate focus of all efforts appears to be on elections as the primary measure of the spread of democracy. No attention is paid to the other basic freedoms and to human rights. One can argue that elections are the necessary first step on the road to achieving those objectives, but unfortunately, those who have languished in jails for three decades do not have the luxury of waiting for elections and duly elected governments. Change, albeit in the right direction, operates on a geological time scale that ordinary individuals, especially those whose freedoms are denied and their families cannot afford.

Both the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act and UN resolution 1559, in spite of their good intentions and their aim at liberating Lebanon from under Syrian Baathist rule, paid only lip service to the rampant human rights abuses suffered by the Lebanese people under the Syrian occupation. Most importantly, they completely ignored the fate of thousands of Lebanese nationals who, for no reason whatsoever other than the simple vulgarity and wantonness of a sadist political system that thrives on fear and abuse, ended up locked up in Syria's jails. Now that the capitals of the West have admitted what they knew all along, namely that their sponsorship of the Syrian "presence" in Lebanon was in fact for a bona fide occupation, what are they waiting for to begin reversing the most inhumane aspects of an occupation: prisoners of conscience, victims of the practice of enforced disappearances by Security and Intelligence Services and the assassinations of journalists and diplomats, pillars of the culture of death and oppression that were common in Eastern Europe under the Stalinist regimes and that have been the staple of Arab dictatorships for several decades?

Often seized in their homes or disappeared from the streets of Lebanon, these prisoners were transferred from holding cell to holding cell inside occupied Lebanon before being illegally extradited across the border and jailed in the notorious prisons of Syria (Mazze, Tadmur, etc...) without any semblance of due process (no attorney, no court, no next of kin notification, secret detentions...). The reasons for their arrest and disappearance range from ordinary everyday incidents that turn into nightmares, to a patriotic and vocal opposition to the occupation, and to military personnel who were fighting the Syrian army while under orders of their superiors in the Lebanese army. As an example, a car accident between a Lebanese civilian and a Syrian Army truck becomes enough of a reason for the civilian to be locked up in Syria for 20 years. Or a soldier in the Lebanese army who carried out his orders on the front line and fell in the hands of the Syrians, but instead of being treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention spent 15 years in a Syrian jail. Or a civilian Lebanese who happened by chance to drive by a Hezbollah training camp was seized by the militia and handed over to the Syrians who transferred him to Syria for years and years. Many never came back. Many died and their bodies returned to their loved ones under seal and under strict orders not to open the coffins. According to Syrian political dissenters who have escaped to the West and are speaking up for the first time, many of the Lebanese prisoners, and no doubt prisoners of other nationalities as well, are believed to have been used as Guinea pigs in Syria's chemical weapons programs testing fields. What is worse is that after the 1990 toppling of the last free Lebanese government, all the puppet governments that succeeded each other in Beirut have denied the existence of the detainees. When pressured by the families of the detainees, the Lebanese government twice set up inquiry committees who have yet to release their reports or their findings.

According to two prominent NGOs, the Lebanese SOLIDE (Support for Lebanese in Detention and Exile) and the Franco-Lebanese SOLIDA (Support for Lebanese Detained Arbitrarily), there are at least a few hundred known cases of Lebanese nationals who are currently held in secret detention in Syria, but whose existence is denied by both the Syrian regime and its Lebanese puppet government. In a couple of notorious cases, even as the Lebanese and Syrian governments were denying the existence of specific cases that were brought to their attention, the prisoners in question were suddenly released, demonstrating either one of two things: Either the Syrian government no longer knows who it is holding - very often the prisoner is given a new name in the prison so that no one knows that they even exist under their real names - or the Syrian regime is lying and refuses to acknowledge the existence of these hundreds of Lebanese prisoners.

As the era of Baathist rule in Syria comes to an end, there is great fear that the Syrian regime is "cleaning up" its torture chambers before its sordid record is exposed to the world. There is fear that the prisoners are being eliminated in the same fashion that the regime of Saddam Hussein eliminated its own prisoners. There has to be an immediate and concerted action by the West to place this issue on the top of its list of demands from Syria before it is too late. Moreover, the issue of the Lebanese detainees in Syria has become a lightning rod for all the frustrations and the anxieties of the past three decades for the simple reason that it is the most obvious and egregious violation of human rights. There can be no academic discussions about its validity as a human rights issue. There is no official hostility between Syria and Lebanon so that prisoners can be released as part of a deal to be negotiated. No one can argue any political motives for either the detentions themselves or the demands for the release of the detainees. As such, a release of the detainees could speed up reconciliation and healing. Otherwise, it could turn out to be the Achilles heel of any attempt at reconciliation or for the Lebanese people to establish any friendly relations with Syria once the Syrian occupation ends and it turns out that the Syrians did in fact commit the unthinkable against thousands of innocent Lebanese civilians.

The cries of anguish of the families of the detainees continue in Beirut. They have staged every march and demonstration. They have sought the help of every international organization and government. They have gone to the Syrian border asking for an audience with the Syrian dictator, only to be rebuked and sent back. They have staged sit-ins at the offices of the UN in Beirut. They have nowhere left to go to demand an accounting for their children, their husbands and their brothers. Only yesterday they launched a new campaign aiming at sensitizing the rest of an anesthetized Lebanese society as well as the international community on this issue. Eight Lebanese flags are being circulated in Lebanon, France and the United States to collect signatures on them and then turn them into petitions demanding the immediate release of the Lebanese detainees from Syria.

At a press conference at Lebanese University this past week, the families of the detainees explained their latest move: "Our children are being tortured in Syrian jails for more than 15 years now. It is simply unacceptable that nothing is being done to set them free. This is a humanitarian issue of concern to all Lebanese, regardless of their affiliation. Our children must be freed immediately", said Violette Nassif, a member of the Families Committee whose son, Johnny was captured on October 13, 1990 as a soldier fighting the Syrian invasion under military orders.

The key compelling objective is now for the the US, France and the UN to recognize that by declaring the Syrian "presence" in Lebanon an occupation they have assumed the consequences of what an occupier did and does to its occupied victim. As such, the world must act immediately and with great urgency to bring the issue of the Lebanese detainees in Syria to its only humanitarian conclusion: An accounting of all those Lebanese detainees who are alive in Syria's prisons and their immediate release, as well as an accounting of all those detainees who were killed inside the torture chambers of Bashar Assad and his father Hafez. Nothing short of that will cleanse the conscience of those who, after remaining silent for so many decades over the rape of Lebanon by Syria, have come now to recognize their monumental mistake and have begun taking action to make up for this outrageous crime against decency and international law. The human factor is at the core of the question of the Lebanese detainees in Syria, and it must therefore take equal standing with, if not precedence over, the other issues of regional peace, the war on terrorism, the development of weapons of mass destruction by Syria, and the liberation of Lebanon for the Syrian occupation.