Soldiers and policemen held captive since August 2014 released as part of swap deal brokered by Qatar
Syria’s al-Qaida branch has released a group of Lebanese soldiers and police officers held captive since August 2014 as part of a swap deal brokered by Qatar that included Lebanon setting free an unspecified number of prisoners.
The prisoners given up by Beirut included a former wife of the Islamic State group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, according to a senior Lebanese security official. The woman was arrested in Lebanon last year.
The release caps a long ordeal and drama over the fate of the Lebanese troops, that has shaken the tiny Mediterranean country, which has seen innumerable spillovers from the civil war in neighbouring Syria.
The al-Qaida group, known as Nusra Front, released the 16 soldiers and police officers in the town of Arsal along the Lebanese-Syrian border, where they were abducted last year.
The militants brought the troops in three pickup trucks to a meeting point on the edge of the town, to be handed over to Lebanese authorities who were waiting along with Red Cross vehicles. A Lebanese news agency said the exchange was under way. It was earlier delayed pending the entry of humanitarian aid to Arsal, an unnamed Nusra Front member told the Associated Press.
Masked Nusra Front fighters waving black al-Qaida flags were deployed in the area, including several who stood on the roof of a building overlooking the area.
Pan-Arab satellite channel al-Jazeera, funded by the Qatari government and based in Doha, said Qatar had mediated the deal. The Gulf nation, a strong supporter of insurgents fighting to topple Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, has a history of mediating prisoners’ exchanges in the Middle East. Al-Jazeera, along with the Lebanese local MTV station, broadcast the release.
Read more:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/01/al-qaida-syria-releases-16-lebanese-prisoners
