Relatives of hostages protest, freed women see captors on TV

Relatives of 11 Lebanese pilgrims who have been held by Syrian rebels for two weeks staged a brief sit-in Tuesday along the airport road, after women who were on the same tour recognized two of the kidnappers when they appeared on television during an interview. The 11 men were kidnapped in the northern Syrian province of Aleppo on their way back from pilgrimage in Iran, while elderly men and women were allowed to leave. Around 30 women blocked the old airport road for around 5 minutes to protest a lack of new information on their relatives. LBCI said that some of the women, who were on the pilgrimage and traveling on the bus chartered by Badr al-Kubra travel agency, recognized two Syrian rebels being interviewed by LBCI inside Turkey as men who took part in the kidnapping. The station identified the two men as Abdel-Salam Sadeq and another nicknamed Abu Fadi. Shortly after hearing that the pilgrims had been captured on May 22, families took to streets in the Beirut southern suburbs, a stronghold of Hezbollah and Amal, blocking roads with burning tires and barricades. But protesters heeded a call by Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah to return home after he promised to work relentlessly on securing the release of the 11 men. Hayat Awali, one of the organizers of Badr al-Kubra’s trip, held the anti-Assad Free Syrian Army responsible for the kidnapping and for the security of the captives. “From now on, we will consider the Free Syrian Army as the only side [responsible for them],” she told LBCI. Ersat Hurmuzlu, a senior adviser to Turkish President Abdullah Gul, said Monday Ankara has no new information on the hostages. Speaking to The Daily Star, Hurmuzlu said the information that Ankara and the Lebanese Cabinet had earlier received indicated that that the hostages were “OK.”