Will a prisoner deal thaw relations between Lebanon and Syria?

An agreement to repatriate 300 Syrian inmates from prisons in Lebanon could herald warmer ties between the two neighbouring countries - and the end of a chequered past marked by decades of Assad-era tutelage.

The issue of Lebanon’s Syrian prisoners has been at the top of Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa’s diplomatic shopping list since he toppled Bashar Al-Assad’s regime in December 2024.

According to reports by Syrian media, Sharaa’s administration went as far as viewing the issue as “existential”, threatening diplomatic and political measures if it was not quickly resolved. However, official sources later denied the reports.

The agreement was signed earlier this month in the presence of Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, his deputy Tarek Mitri, and the two countries’ justice ministers. It stipulates that over the next three months, about 300 prisoners will become eligible for repatriation to complete their sentences in Syria.

Around 2,400 Syrians are incarcerated in Lebanon’s overcrowded jails. But those still awaiting trial - about two-thirds of all Syrian inmates - are so far excluded from the agreement. Many have spent years languishing in pre-trial detention.

Some of these prisoners were detained on counter-terror charges due to their alleged links to Islamist groups that fought against the Assad regime amid the 2011 uprising. Others are accused of attacks against the Lebanese army and security forces.

Sharaa’s government views some of the inmates as “political prisoners” who were detained mostly because of pressure from Assad and Hezbollah. For the Lebanese, releasing or transferring any prisoners involved in attacks on Lebanese soldiers would cross a red line, which may prove to be an obstacle for future agreements.

Importantly, the prisoner deal could open the path to cooperation on a litany of other long-standing issues and help to establish an equal partnership between Syria and Lebanon for the first time in their shared history.

A reset in Lebanon-Syria ties

Lebanon’s relationship with Syria is “radically different” since the fall of Assad, Mitri said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “The present Syrian government is neither interested in hegemony over Lebanon nor is it interfering in our internal affairs.”

The rapprochement is a sign of power shifts in the region, which have seen much of Iran’s influence dwindle. With Assad’s ouster, Tehran lost a long-time strategic ally, while Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful foreign proxy, was severely weakened following its recent war with Israel.

Both events have given rise to new leadership in Damascus and Beirut, offering both capitals an opportunity to reset years of strained relations.

Lebanon was under de facto Syrian tutelage for decades, until 2005, when the popular uprising known as the Cedar Revolution led Syrian troops to withdraw from Lebanese soil. However, Damascus maintained significant, albeit reduced, influence through its ally Hezbollah and a pro-Syrian coalition of political parties.

For their part, Syrians still remember all too well Hezbollah’s role in supporting the Assad regime’s military onslaught during the civil war.

“The prisoner transfer is an important step in Lebanese-Syrian relations, as it has been a major thorn in the past year, hindering any progress on other important files such as border demarcation, trade and refugee return,” Mohanad Hage Ali, an expert on Lebanon and a senior fellow with the Carnegie Middle East Centre, told The New Arab.

Yet for all the optimism surrounding the prisoner deal, several sticking points could complicate the rapprochement.

A number of official visits since Sharaa came to power have sought to address key issues, namely, illegal smuggling along the border, which last year sparked rounds of clashes between Syrian troops and heavily armed Lebanese tribes.

Then there is the border itself: roughly 375km of porous, disputed territory that has remained largely undefined since the end of the French Mandate in 1946.

Meanwhile, Beirut will seek cooperation on the return of Syrian refugees and the case of missing Lebanese citizens, thousands of whom vanished into Syria’s prisons and interrogation centres during the Assad regime. 

Both countries, shattered by crises and war, stand to gain from improved economic ties. Syria provides Lebanon’s only overland trade route, which is key for its agricultural exports to Iraq and Jordan. But recent customs disputes have slowed traffic in both directions, and a permanent trade agreement will be needed to ease frictions. 

Thorny domestic issues

However, the prisoner agreement has brought renewed attention to the thorny political issue of Lebanon’s own “Islamist” detainees, which Salam’s government will be under increasing pressure to resolve.

It is a domestic issue that is “long overdue, and it will become a more heated dossier in the upcoming months,” Ali said.

Hundreds of Lebanese nationals crossed the border into Syria to join Sunni groups fighting against the Assad regime, including Al-Qaeda affiliate the Al-Nusra Front.

Many were arrested on terrorism-related charges upon returning home. But in a twist of fate, the same man who founded Nusra - before breaking ties with Al-Qaeda and reinventing himself as a statesman - now sits in the presidential palace in Damascus.

The implicit irony is obvious to most of those who have been detained, prompting widespread calls for an amnesty from Sunni majority towns such as Saida and Tripoli. In late January, inmates of the notorious Roumieh Prison launched an open-ended hunger strike to protest prison conditions and what they termed “selective justice”.

And earlier this month, MP Faysal Karameh submitted a general amnesty bill in Parliament, citing the “unbearable injustice” of detainees held for years without trial.

Adding fuel to these tensions are the conditions prisoners face inside Lebanon’s jails, which human rights organisations have denounced as “inhumane”. Overcrowding, lack of food and medical supplies, and a pattern of “shocking violations” against Syrian detainees, including torture, are among the allegations.

Experts warn that the prisoner transfer deal - which does not encompass Syrians awaiting trial - risks becoming little more than an expedient way to establish improved ties with Syria, at the expense of sidelining the chronic issues facing Lebanon’s prison system.

The agreement must be followed by “verifiable legal guarantees and transparency that prevents the issue from being politicised rather than addressed as a matter of criminal justice and human rights,” Fadel Abdulghany, executive director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, told TNA.

“The danger lies in this becoming a delaying tactic, leaving the cases of those not yet convicted indefinitely postponed.”

Alex Martin Astley is a freelance journalist based in Beirut, covering conflict, foreign policy, and social justice issues

Follow him on X: @AlexMAstley

Edited by Charlie Hoyle