Mr. Ghazi Aad

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  www.lebanese-forces.org/humanrights/Still-unnamed100222 - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 9/12/2008    Last Visited: 9/28/2008  

  "When we write a name on our list, it comes from the families" who have seen a relative in a Syrian jail, said Ghazi Aad, SOLIDE's director and co-founder.
  
  During the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, many families were afraid to speak to SOLIDE for fear of reprisals from the Syrian intelligence services or of losing the visitor permits the Syrian authorities granted them.Although SOLIDE's list is long, past experience suggests it represents only a fraction of the actual detainees.
  
  "In 1998, when Syria released 151 [Lebanese], we had only four names out of the whole amount," Aad said.
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  Aad, however, dismissed its importance, as it is comprised of "employees, military employees or police employees.It's not transparent."
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  Two days after Mouallem's visit, Aad, from SOLIDE, met with Sleiman in an effort to persuade him to form an independent committee with foreign experts to investigate the matter.
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  "We don't have a legal mechanism in Lebanon to identify who was taken by the Syrians and who was killed by local militias," Aad said."That's why we met the president and told him we should have a new commission based on international norms."
  
  Aad said that president was open to the suggestion, but this is hardly likely to offer much cheer to the families who still wait for news.

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  www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id= - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 4/15/2008    Last Visited: 4/15/2008  

  "To put it bluntly, they either remain in Syria or died as a result of torture they endured while in Syrian custody in Lebanon or Syria," SOLIDE president Ghazi Aad told AFP.
  
  He was referring to a 1987 Amnesty International report that documented 38 methods of torture practiced by Syrian security forces at the time.
  
  "Lebanese intelligence arrested Barakat in April 1992 and turned him over to Syrian intelligence," Aad said, adding that a Syrian court sentenced Barakat to 15 years in prison for fighting the Syrian Army in 1990, after which he was tortured.
  
  The organization said that Barakat refuses to see anyone except his family as he remains in a state of shock after being confined under difficult conditions for so long.
  
  Toward the end of Lebanon's 15-year Civil War, then-General Michel Aoun headed a temporary government and launched a "war of liberation" against Syria, which had troops deployed in eastern and northern parts of Lebanon.
  
  Syria's forces spread throughout most of the country on October 13, 1990, the day on which many of those still missing were captured.The Lebanese Army was split at the time, with most supporting Aoun and the rest Syria.
  
  Aad said that Barakat's mother, similar to many of the missing, had visited him in the Sednaya prison in Syria until 2000 when she lost track of him and reported him missing.
  
  "Many families reported visiting their sons in prisons in Syria only to find them gone thereafter," Aad said, adding most depend on released prisoners for news of their loved ones.
  
  SOLIDE drew up a list of names, including Barakat's, of those held or missing in Syrian prisons and submitted it to a Lebanese-Syrian panel established in 2005 for this purpose.
  
  According to Aad, the Syrian response was terse: "We do not have any information about any of the names on this list."
  
  In spite of this, Barakat was released to the great joy of his family, who had spent seven years in the dark about his whereabouts.Aad said that the Syrian authorities kept Barakat in prison for an additional year after he served his sentence, finally releasing him in the fall of 2007.He returned to Lebanon in mid-March.
  
  Aad said the case of George Shaalawit is similar.
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  They were pleasantly surprised by his release in December 2005 after 11 years in a Syrian prison without due process," said Aad.

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  www.hineni.com/index2.asp?id=1108978&Date=8/14/2008 - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 8/14/2008    Last Visited: 8/15/2008  

  "We are not saying all 17,000 are in Syria, but we know that there are a few hundred from the testimonies of family members and witnesses," says Ghazi Aad, the head of Solide, a group that lobbies for Lebanese detainees in Syrian jails.
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  Mr. Aad says that Syria refuses to hand over detailed information about Lebanese it detains.

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  www.libnen.com/2005/11/lebanon_to_iden.html - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 1/1/2005    Last Visited: 12/1/2007  

  There are 641 Lebanese nationals believed to be in Syrian prisons, according to Ghazi Aad, the head of the committee for the Support of Lebanese in Detention and Exile (SOLIDE).

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  www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id= - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 9/28/2007    Last Visited: 9/28/2007  

  "This is Lebanon - the constant political crisis keeps this country too busy to deal with its real internal problems," said Ghazi Aad, president of the Support for Lebanese in Detention and Exile (SOLIDE), which launched several protests for missing Lebanese last year.
  
  Now, the SOLIDE tent erected next to UN House in Beirut - once a Mecca for anyone with a tale of a missing relative from the Civil War or one who disappeared during the era of Syrian "tutelage" - stands empty.
  
  Passersby seem too preoccupied to stop and look at the dozens of photos and pictures put up by the families of the missing Lebanese, whose numbers have been reported as high as 17,000.
  
  "We are still maintaining the tent, but people are too busy being concerned with the presidential election," said Aad.

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  www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/March2007/05/c6564. - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 3/5/2007    Last Visited: 3/5/2007  

  Our guest speaker from Lebanon is Mr. Ghazi Aad, the founder and director of a humanitarian NGO named SOLID (Support of Lebanese in Detention).He will present his testimony on this human rights crisis and on the work that his organization has done towards its resolution.
  
  Mr. Aad has worked closely with international groups and organizations such as the United Nations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch among
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  - The testimony of Mr. Ghazi Aad;

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  www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id= - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 4/12/2007    Last Visited: 4/12/2007  

  Speakers included Sonia Eid, president of the Association of Families of Lebanese Prisoners Detained in Syria, Ghazi Aad, president of Solide, and Change and Reform MP Ghassan Mokheiber.
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  "Two weeks before the Syrian Army withdrew from Lebanon, the Solide committee of families of those detained in Syrian prisons decided to wage an open-ended sit-in," Ghazi Aad said proudly as he began his remarks.
  
  Mokheiber said he had been working to free Lebanese detainees in Syrian jails for 17 years."As a citizen I was committed to standing by these families.I am still as an MP," he said.
  
  The MP and member of Parliament's Human Rights Committee vowed to pursue the issue "vigorously."
  
  "The issue of disappearances is not only legal, it is humanitarian because [the detainees] come from all parties and religions," he said."Very few have the courage to speak loudly enough."
  
  Aad said the single most important achievement for Solide in their two year sit-in was the admission by all Lebanese citizens and officials that Lebanese citizens were still being held in Syrian prisons.
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  Solide has also set as one of its main goals, Aad added, to remove the process of negotiations from the joint Lebanese-Syrian commission that was formed on May 4, 2005, to deal with the issue.
  
  "The joint Lebanese-Syrian commission has failed," said Mokheiber."Syrians have been denying [the detention of Lebanese] despite evidence that was presented to the Syrian authority that indisputably shows their involvement."
  
  Solide intends to internationalize the negotiations to put more pressure on Syria to come clean.Aad blamed the Lebanese government for slowing the process.
  
  "There is no international commission because the executive authority is insisting on keeping the joint committee, though we insist on eliminating this committee and creating an international one," Aad said.
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  At the end of his remarks, surrounded by people holding photographs of detained family members, Aad reiterated his commitment to seeing Lebanese detainees freed.
  
  "We will continue the sit-in until those demands are fulfilled," he said.

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  www.catholicnews.com/data/briefs/cns/20080923.htm - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 9/23/2008    Last Visited: 9/23/2008  

  "Syria has dealt badly with Lebanese issues in general and with the detainees issue in particular," said Ghazi Aad, director of Support of Lebanese in Detention and Exile, which seeks an international commission with full power to investigate all cases of forced disappearances that occurred at the hands of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon.

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  www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id= - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 10/13/2008    Last Visited: 8/30/2007  

  This is the day when the Syrian government refused and still refuses to reveal the fate of the prisoners or allow international organizations to visit them," said Ghazi Aad, director of Support of Lebanese in Detention and Exile (SOLIDE), a Beirut-based human rights group.
  
  Aad made the comments during a press conference in front of the UN headquarters in Beirut, UN House, on the International Day of the Disappeared.The conference was attended by a number of prisoners' families who have been staging a sit-in in front of UN House since the Syrian withdrawal in 2005.
  
  The families were not only Lebanese, but also included Syrians, Palestinians and Egyptians who held their missing sons' pictures and posters that asked "Where are they?"
  
  Aad said that the issue of Lebanese missing in Syrian prisons "is a Lebanese issue par excellence" but is being used otherwise amid the political tensions.Appealing to Lebanese political parties, he said: "Don't use this case unless you have the solution, which is a very simple one, an international commission of inquiry."
  
  The gathering in Beirut was organized by the Committee of the Families of the Lebanese Detainees in Syria, the Syrian Committee to Save the Lives of Prisoners of Conscience in Syrian Prisons and SOLIDE.http://www.dailystar.com.lb

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  www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id= - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 7/21/2008    Last Visited: 7/21/2008  

  "We, as civil society organizations, want to confirm the existence of Lebanese detainees in Syrian prisons," said Ghazi Aad, founder of Support of Lebanese in Detention and Exile (SOLIDE), an NGO which has longed worked to uncover the fate of Lebanese detainees in Syrian prisons.

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