Syria and Lebanon have signed an agreement to transfer Syrian prisoners currently in Lebanese prisons back to their home country.
The agreement, concluded on 6 February, crowns nearly a year of negotiations to hammer out the details. Under its terms, the prisoners must have received final sentences and have already completed a substantial portion of their terms.
The remainder will be served in their country of nationality. The agreement affects about 300 Syrian prisoners in Lebanon who are to be transferred immediately to Syria. It is unclear whether some will be granted an opportunity for a reinvestigation or even a possible pardon.
The opening of detention centres and prisons in Syria following the fall of the Al-Assad regime in December 2024 proved a painful experience for Lebanon, as it came to light that many Lebanese nationals were among the detainees.
While these were released and returned to their families in Lebanon, a more agonising issue remains: the missing Lebanese who had been forcibly disappeared under that regime. Estimated to number in the hundreds, many of these cases date back to 1976, following the Arab League-sanctioned Syrian military entry into Lebanon at the height of the country’s Civil War.
Lebanese prisons are filled with Syrian inmates. The Roumieh Prison, in particular, is notorious for overcrowding and harsh humanitarian conditions. The prisoners are a mixture of those serving sentences and those whose cases are still ongoing. Both groups include activists who supported the Syrian insurgency and individuals convicted of or charged with criminal offenses.
The negotiators initially focused on those who had been serving the longest sentences. A second phase is expected to include additional criteria pertaining to those serving shorter sentences or those being held on remand. In the event of an agreement, presumably the legal proceedings of the latter group would be completed in Syria.
It is in the interests of both Beirut and Damascus to agree the legal criteria governing this exchange and to avoid any harmful politicisation of the issue. Following the Syrian entry into Lebanon in 1976, Damascus treated Lebanon as though it were an extension of Syria. The Al-Assad regime continued to exert comprehensive influence and control over the country during and after the Civil War until 2005 when Syrian forces were compelled to withdraw.
After the outbreak of the Syrian Revolution and its rapid descent into armed conflict in 2011, hundreds of thousands of Syrians fled to Lebanon, one of the many countries in which they sought refuge. That did not save some of them from the long reach of Al-Assad’s security apparatus and imprisonment in Lebanon on assorted charges.
For the post-Al-Assad regime in Syria, retrieving Syrian citizens from Lebanese prisons is as symbolically significant as the earlier release of detainees from Al-Assad’s prisons. Syrian refugees in Lebanon were often adversely affected, directly and indirectly, by regional power equations as they related to Syria.
This worsened after the Lebanese Shia group Hizbullah entered the Syrian war in support of Al-Assad, which caused the conflict to spill over into Lebanon through repeated clashes with Syrian militants whether affiliated with the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army or with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS) group along the eastern border.
The sentences handed down to Syrians in Lebanon were shrouded in ambiguity. Were they convicted for their political support for the Syrian Revolution, or were they involved in violent extremist activities inside Lebanon, or were they guilty of non-political crimes? It is likely that some of them ended up in prison due to malicious accusations branding them as terrorists and the failure of the Lebanese justice system to give them impartial hearings.
Syrian workers forced to work for meagre wages in harsh working conditions and without legal protection in Lebanon were at the complete mercy of their employers. Even a minor dispute could land a Syrian worker in jail on inflated or false charges. Given his lack of valid residency papers or a work permit, he could then end up languishing in prison for long periods without trial.
Many Syrian prisoners in Lebanon have staged hunger strikes to protest against wrongful detention or harsh prison conditions, bringing the Lebanese justice system under the glare of international human-rights organisations. Prisoner-transfer agreements with Syria could eventually close this awkward issue for the Lebanese authorities.
The agreement implicitly bars the transfer of any prisoner implicated in armed actions against the Lebanese army or the death of Lebanese soldiers.
The agreement is a significant step towards improving Syrian-Lebanese relations, and it offers cause for optimism although there remains a long list of pending issues that are both complex and vulnerable to demagogic manipulation.
Topping the list are the return of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, border controls and the destruction of illegal crossings, and the cessation of Hizbullah’s interventions in Syrian affairs. Another crucial issue the two sides need to address is the long-stalled talks over border demarcation. For decades, the mountainous Lebanese-Syrian border has facilitated narcotics and weapons smuggling.
Both governments are keen to turn over a new leaf in their hitherto tense relationship. However, whereas Syria, since the overthrow of Al-Assad, enjoys powerful international and regional support and generous pledges of material assistance, Lebanon remains largely isolated, economically crippled, and at the mercy of immense pressures to meet Israeli-US conditions for disarming Hizbullah as a condition for the release of financial assistance.
This disparity affects multiple domains, including the complex and costly repatriation of Syrian refugees from Lebanon. Although an estimated 500,000 Syrians have already returned from Lebanon to Syria since Al-Assad’s fall, roughly double that number are still in Lebanon, awaiting the necessary preparations to facilitate their return under proper conditions.
Qatar has pledged to fund the return of about 100,000 Syrians from Lebanon during the current year in cooperation with the International Organisation for Migration, but this falls far short of the necessary levels of funding.
Syria stands to benefit more from international assistance. Funds that previously assisted Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries will now be redirected towards Syrian reconstruction. Lebanon will lose the international support it had received for hosting Syrian refugees, and it will not receive comparable pledges for the reconstruction of the south of the country, devastated in the recent Israel invasion.
Improved bilateral relations will enable both sides to address the border-control issue. The lack of clear demarcation, among other reasons, led to unintended clashes between Syrian and Lebanese forces in March last year. Despite the Lebanese army’s efforts over the past year to secure the border and destroy illegal crossings, the issue remains a major challenge, especially given Lebanon’s limited resources.
Greater bilateral security and military coordination will help, however, and the Syrian authorities have incentives of their own to promote cooperation in this area, not least their determination to halt Lebanese interference inside Syria and to curb attempted rebellions led by former Al-Assad regime officers operating out of Lebanon.
Both sides need to work together to improve border surveillance, develop infrastructure, dismantle illegal crossings, and allocate appropriately equipped forces to guard the borders and pursue smugglers. The Lebanese authorities recently gave their Syrian counterparts an encouraging example of the advantages of cooperation when they arrested several figures affiliated with the Al-Assad regime who were running weapons-smuggling operations out of Lebanon to support insurgent activities in Syria.
But like the repatriation of refugees, bilateral border-security cooperation requires financial support from parties eager to promote stability and development in Syria and Lebanon and the region in general. This is directly connected to supporting the Lebanese army’s efforts to extend state control over all Lebanese territory which, in turn, is linked to the pressures to disarm and marginalise Hizbullah.
This is a far thornier issue than repatriation, prisoner transfer, or cooperation on the economy and trade.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 12 February, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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