BEIRUT: Syrian rebels holding 11 Lebanese Shiite pilgrims hostage said they would release the men when their country had established a new “civil state” but left room for negotiations, a video obtained by Al Jazeera television showed.
The hostages said in the video they were in good health and being treated well.
“The guests will be released by the Syrian civil state when their case is reviewed by a new democratic parliament,” the rebels said in a written statement on the video.
“But given the current conditions it may be possible to negotiate their release with neighboring countries.”
A 15-month-old uprising against four decades of Assad family rule has grown increasingly bloody as rebels bring the fight to President Bashar Assad’s security forces trying to crack down on the rebellion.
Rebels have previously kidnapped men from Syria’s Shiite ally Iran, who said they were pilgrims but who rebels said were fighting with Assad’s forces. The men were later released.
The Lebanese hostages were on a bus that was stopped by gunmen as it crossed into northern Syria from Turkey on its way home from a pilgrimage to Iran. The gunmen released the women and kept the men.
The kidnappers have accused some of the hostages of helping to put down their uprising. They previously said talks for the men’s release would not start until they received an apology from Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, head of Lebanon’s Shiite militant group Hezbollah.
Hezbollah has remained a staunch supporter of Assad who is from a minority Alawite sect considered an offshoot of Shiite Islam. The revolt against him has been led mostly by Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority, who complain that Alawite elites and their Shiite allies dominate the country.
A video obtained by Al Jazeera briefly showed all 11 hostages on film, apparently in good health. They said had not been ill-treated or forced to speak, but it was not possible to verify their statements.
“I want to assure my family that I am well and in good health and that we are being treated as guests,” says one grey-haired man in the video, smiling.
Opposition bloc meets to choose new leader
In Istanbul, Turkey, leaders of the exiled Syrian National Council met on Saturday to pick a new leader after the resignation of Burhan Ghalioun last month to avert divisions in the opposition bloc.
The vote came as Western powers moved to slap sanctions on Damascus amid mounting anger over a massacre in a central village blamed on regime troops and fears of a full-fledged civil war in Syria.
Ghalioun resigned on May 17 to avert a possible split in the SNC after activists on the ground accused him of hogging power and not coordinating enough with the Local Coordination Committees, which are spearheading anti-government protests on the street.
His detractors also accused him of allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to play a leading role within the SNC.
Sources in the group said the aim was to pick a “consensus” candidate who would be acceptable to Islamists, liberals and nationalists.
They said that could be Abdel Basset Sayda, a Kurd, and member of the SNC’s executive office.
Sayda, who lives in exile in Sweden, joined the SNC as an “independent activist,” according to his friend and fellow Kurdish militant Massud Akko.
He is a member of the SNC’s executive bureau and heads the bloc’s human rights department.
He was born in 1956 in Amuda, a mostly Kurdish city in the northeastern Syrian province of Hassakeh.
“He is honest, level-headed and cultured,” Akko said.
