Washington Urges Lebanon and Syria to Accelerate Repatriation of Syrian Political Prisoners

U.S. Congressman Joe Wilson has called on the governments of Lebanon and Syria to establish an urgent mechanism to expedite the release and repatriation of Syrian political prisoners detained in Lebanon.

In a post on X on Wednesday evening, Wilson said that a number of Syrian political detainees held in Lebanon’s Roumieh Prison were imprisoned “by Hezbollah simply for opposing the Assad regime, which has cooperated closely with the group.”

“I urge the governments of Lebanon and Syria to act swiftly on a mechanism to return these Syrian political prisoners to their homeland,” Wilson wrote.

His comments come in the context of a bilateral agreement reached last September between Beirut and Damascus to form two joint committees tasked with addressing three main issues:

Determining the fate of roughly 2,000 Syrian prisoners held in Lebanese prisons;

Clarifying the whereabouts of Lebanese citizens missing in Syria for years;

Finalizing the delimitation of the shared border, which remains unresolved.

Wilson’s statement reflects growing international attention to human rights concerns and the plight of Syrian political prisoners in Lebanon, amid increasing calls for enhanced cooperation between the two neighboring states to resolve these long-standing issues.