Families of the 25 captive servicemen launched a fresh protest Monday, briefly blocking the northern entrance to Downtown Beirut and threatening to take the hostage negotiations into their own hands.
The families warned that Monday’s one-hour protest on the Saifiroad would be followed by its permanent closure the next day if the government continues to keep them in the dark.
“If they do not give us any serious information on the case, we will be taking surprising and unprecedented escalatory measures starting tomorrow,” the families said in a joint statement at the end of their protest. “We will now wait for officials to call us with real news.”
Hussein Youssef, father of hostage Mohammad Youssef, told The Daily Star that the move came after the Nusra Front, which holds most of the hostages, announced that the negotiations were getting nowhere.
“We received a Nusra Front statement that said the negotiations were not advancing, and that we as families should form a committee and meet with the Qatari mediator,” he said. “We took this statement seriously, simply because the authorities did not negate it.”
Youssef said a committee representing them was ready to hold direct negotiations with the Nusra Front to replace the government mediators.
The bottom line for the families is to receive information that guarantee that negotiations are progressing.
“We are ready to negotiate with the Nusra Front and find out who is lying,” Youssef added. “In our view, the government is lying to us.”
Nusra Front and ISIS still hold at least 25 servicemen hostage on the outskirts of the northeastern town of Arsal.
More than 30 soldiers and policemen were initially kidnapped during deadly clashes between Army and militants in Arsal last August. Each of the two groups have killed two hostages, while Nusra has freed eight.
