Mass grave points to Syrian abuse

From The Australian: Mass grave points to Syrian abuse, Correspondents in Beirut,
December 05, 2005 ...

LEBANESE forces unearthed at least 20 decomposed bodies buried in a mass grave in an eastern town that was the headquarters of Syrian intelligence for three decades, security sources said on the weekend.

Witnesses and security sources said the corpses, most now only skeletons in scraps of underwear, were found on an old onion farm in the town of Anjar, long used by Syrian intelligence as a jail and interrogation centre.

...Ghazi Aad, director of the group Support of Lebanese in Detention and Exile, called the mass grave "the biggest proof" of the extent of Syrian atrocities against Lebanese.

..The fact the remains were in bags and not buried according to religious rites indicated the people might have been killed.

...An official said the remains of at least another 12 bodies were dug out from the defence ministry compound in Yarze, near Beirut, in mid-November. Digging operations are continuing in Anjar and at least one other location in the mountains east of Beirut.

Most of the bodies exhumed from Yarze are believed to belong to Lebanese soldiers killed during the Syrian military offensive in 1990

...Sixty-one Lebanese soldiers are still missing from Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war, which Syria entered in 1976 ostensibly as a stabilising force.

Reuters, AFP, AP