BEIRUT, 10 December 2005 — Relatives of thousands of Lebanese missing since the end of the 15-year civil war urged the government yesterday to push ahead with unearthing mass graves after two burial sites were found last week.
The Lebanese authorities know the location of some 35 mass graves scattered around the country, relatives of the missing and support groups told a press conference.
The authorities must “open all the mass graves whose locations are known,” said Waddad Helwani, who heads one of the support groups.
“Now that the government has begun exhuming skeletal remains in mass graves in Anjar and at the defense ministry, we demand that search operations be launched elsewhere,” Helwani said.
In all around 17,000 Lebanese went missing during the 1975-1990 civil war. The remains of 30 people were exhumed last weekend from two mass graves near the village of Anjar, three kilometers (two miles) from the Syria border, where the Syrian Army had its intelligence headquarters and a prison.
According to Amnesty International the remains of 10 people were dug out from a mass grave within the grounds of the Lebanese Defense Ministry in Yarze in November.
Helwani urged the government to seek help from Christian and Muslim warlords who played a central role in the deadly civil war to locate the mass graves. “The parents of the victims have a right to know the truth. Justice must be done in order to seal national reconciliation,” said MP Ghassan Mukhaiber.
