(11 Dec 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Chekka, Lebanon – 10 December 2024
1. Suheil Hamwi, released after 32 years of imprisonment in Syria, greeting person he hasn’t seen since his detainment
2. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Suheil Hamwi, former prisoner: ++STARTS ON PREIVOUS SHOT++
“It was 5:45, we heard noises. There was movement and noise in the prison, a lot of noise. We weren’t used to hearing so much noise. It sounded as if the people running the prison had left. Someone came and opened the first cell, and this kept going. They started opening the doors of all the cells. And when the door couldn’t be opened, people were breaking down the walls. We managed to make it out to the street. It was a very difficult moment, but it was also a moment full of freedom, a moment of glory.”
3. Close of Hamwi
4. Close of photo of Hamwi when he was younger and photo of Hamwi’s son as an infant
5. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Suheil Hamwi, former prisoner released after 32 years of imprisonment in Syria: ++STARTS ON PREIVOUS SHOT++
“I used to cry. I used to cry of longing, knowing that my son, who came from my body, was away from me at the same time. You can’t see him. You don’t know what he looks like, what he sounds like, how he laughs, so many things. You can’t know anything about him. He is from you and he is yours, but you know nothing about him. Isn’t that painful?"
6. Hamwi posing with his grandchildren and his son’s mother-in-law
7. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Suheil Hamwi, former prisoner released after 32 years of imprisonment in Syria: ++STARTS ON PREVIPOUS SHOT AND PARTIALLY OVERLAID BY SHOT 8++
“Why can’t I come to terms with it? Because I’m still scared that all of this is not real. I am scared I am in a dream still.”
8. Various of Hamwi greeting people he hasn’t seen for 32 years
STORYLINE:
Suheil Hamwi spent 32 years in a Syrian prison, and now, after an offensive by insurgents that toppled the government of Bashar Assad, he’s finally returned to his home in Lebanon.
In 1992, Hamwi worked as a merchant, selling various goods in the town of Chekka in northern Lebanon.
On the night of Eid il-Burbara, or Saint Barbara’s Day — a holiday similar to Halloween — a man came to his door to buy some whiskey.
Hamwi said he handed his 10-month-old son, George, to his wife and went to his car to fetch the whiskey and make the sale.
As Hamwi approached his vehicle, a car filled with men pulled up, he said, forcing him inside and taking him away.
It would be years before his family heard from him again.
Hamwi was one of hundreds of Lebanese citizens detained during Syria’s occupation of Lebanon from 1976 to 2005 and believed to be held in Syrian prisons for decades.
On Sunday, freedom came to him and others unexpectedly — prisoners who’d heard rumors about Syria’s opposition forces and their sweeping campaign found that guards had abandoned their posts.
Hamwi and other prisoners left, he said, and he would soon be among the first from Lebanon to re-enter the country.
“I’m still scared this might not be real,” he told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday from his home — the same one he left more than three decades ago.
AP video shot by Lujain Jo
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