Abbass never came back home from a trip he took from Beirut
to South Lebanon in 1984, while the country was at war. “He was not
really a religious person but he let himself talked into by the leader
of a local militia,” says Hamza. Hamza
lives in Ghobeiry, on the outskirts of south Beirut. His flat is
surrounded by flags of the Shia parties Amal and Hezbollah, which were
fighting against Israel and Christian parties in south Lebanon during
the civil war in the 1980s.

In this pernicious conflict, with fragile alliances, the Amal party fought also against Palestinians and Hezbollah in Ghobeiry. Today,
more than 25 years after the end of the war, militia ex-leaders became
ministers or members of parliament, protected by a law of amnesty.

And
instead of investigating the estimated 17,000 people who went missing
during the war, in 1995 the Lebanese government passed a law that
allowed family to declare their relatives dead. Many people claim the
law was a clever way for the government to avoid taking responsibility. 

But
since then, Lebanese calls to find out what happened to their loved
ones have grown stronger. Remains found in civil war mass graves have
been left unidentifed. And this is where the Red Cross has stepped in. 

Carina
Svenfelt, who leads the disappeared programme at the International Red
Cross Committee’s Beirut office, says that because of the reticence of
authorities. the organisation’s role in Lebanon is “unconventional”.

“In
other countries, we have a supervising role, helping out independent
commissions in charge of the investigations and the exhumations. But
here, the bill about the setup of that sort of commission has remained
in the pipeline since 2012,” she says.

“In
2012, we started to collect ‘pre-disappearance’ data among 2,350
families of missing persons, meaning we have been gathering every
physical detail that could help identify those who went missing.

“We
have no political support whatsoever. Our motive is not political but
humanist: families of people who went missing are dying and have no idea
what happened to their loved ones. We cannot wait any longer.”

Hamza is one of those the Red Cross is trying to help. He patiently
listens to the team about its process: Two copies of his DNA sample
will be stored, one at the organisations Geneva headquarters, and the
other with the Internal Security Forces in Beirut.

This
sample, which will be coded to guarantee anonymity, will probably match
one sample that will be taken out from one the civil war mass graves. It is a similar process to how British experts were able to identify in 2009 the body of Alec Collett, British journalist who was kidnapped in Beirut in 1985. 

But
something unexpected happened; Hamza does not offer his DNA: “I trust
the Red Cross but I don’t trust the ISF. They have never done anything
to help when it comes to that issue. I will not give them my DNA,” he
says.

A week later, interviewed by MEE, Hamza explained why
he refused to give out his sample: “When Abbass went missing we looked
for him, from Syria to Israel.

“Eventually, we found out that he had been killed and that his body had been thrown in a well in the area of Beit Jezzine.

“But
after the war, when the rebuilding started, it became impossible to
find the exact location. We made our peace with the hope of finding his
body and giving him a dignified grave. Wherever he is, may he rest in
peace.”

Mass graves to building sites

Since no law protects the sites of mass graves, many have been destroyed or covered up.

The NGO Act for the Disappeared,
created to support the associations of families who have been fighting
for the past three decades to unearth the truth, has reported that 31
times, human remains have been discovered since the end of the war.

Between
125 and 145 corpses were found. Except on rare occasions where IDs were
found on the bodies, their identities have never been established.

The
existence of civil war mass graves was recognised in 2000 by a
government commission that was in charge of investigating the
disappeared.

The commission mentioned three in Beirut – one in Mar
Mitr cemetery, another in the Martyrs cemetery in Horsh Beirut and the
last one in the English cemetery in Tehouita. However, the government
has never started any initiative to allow their exhumation nor the
search for other civil war mass graves.

Justine Di Mayo, the
co-founder for Act for the Disappeared, told MEE: “We have decided to
collect information about civil war mass graves in order to locate them
and protect them, with the help of anthropologists and coroners.

“If
we wait for the investigation commission to be created, maybe it will
be too late – the sites might be destroyed by new building work.”

A lobbying tool

Like the Red Cross, the NGO has decided to focus on efforts in the field instead of negotiating with local authorities.

“By
investigating on those human remains, we discovered that there is
neither legal framework nor follow-up investigations,”. says Di Mayo. “We
are trying to pass a law that would protect those sites and in the
meantime, we are setting up guidelines on how to deal with those remains
for those who discover them.”

The NGO aims to emphasise the importance of the grave sites when it comes to the disappeared in Lebanon.

“Talking
about those mass grave sites is like saying that those who went missing
are actually dead. Which is a taboo we are trying to break. Even though
their relatives are dead, these families of disappeared ones undergo a
daily psychological torture, having no information on what happened to
them.”

After visiting Hamza, the Red Cross team went to Jnah. The
family of Youssef, a Palestinian who went missing while buying
croissants in 1985 aged 25, is willing to give out their DNA.

“We
still have hope to find out what really happened. Youssef has two kids
who are now married and are carrying the burden of this uncertainty,”
says his brother Hassan.

Facing him, his father, 85 years old,
will die without knowing the truth about his son. “We asked everybody
about him. Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian, all of them liars!” says
Hassan. “Most of time we ended paying large amount of money just to get a lead.”

Very
few people in Lebanon believe that the authorities will do anything
about the disappeared. But instead of giving up, the new generation
wants to act. 

Ghassan, the son of Wadad Halawani who founded a
group that supports families of the disappeared, is working on the
digitisation of 30 years of documents it have collected. The aim is to
allow the younger generation to get to know what really happened during
the civil war, which so far has been only told by the ex-militia
members.

Ghassan says it is time for action.

“The
authorities are doing nothing, so we have to collect as much evidence as
we can about those people who went missing for so many years, so that
will force them into doing something, into taking their
responsibilities’, he says. “In a way, DNA samples that are collected by
the Red Cross are becoming a lobbying tool for us.”