Al Jazeera TV interviewed Lebanese security personnel while they were apparently held by the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front on Tuesday, ahead of completion of a deal expected to secure their release.
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“In the framework of the follow-up in the case of the kidnapped soldiers held by Al-Nusra Front, and as the result of negotiations on the issue, General Security and the Lebanese Red Cross received the body of the martyr soldier Mohammed Hammiya”, Lebanon’s general security body said in a statement.
The Nusra Front seized the Lebanese during an attack on the border town of Arsal mounted together with the Islamic State jihadist group in August 2014.
But she added: “Our joy is incomplete without the release of those held by the Isis group and we hope that the Lebanese state will intensify its efforts for their release”. “We are ready to negotiate with Daesh if we find someone to negotiate with”, he said.
Meanwhile, families and friends of the prisoners, having held a months-long sit-in in downtown Beirut, broke into a dance and cheered as news of the released prisoners reached them. However, the exchange was delayed pending the arrival of humanitarian aid as part of the Qatar-brokered deal. The Gulf nation, a strong supporter of insurgents fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad, has a history of mediating prisoners’ exchanges in the Middle East. Dulaimi gave birth in prison.
After her release, she told al-Jazeera that she and her children were refugees and that her ex-husband, whom she had divorced six years earlier “was not [the ISIS leader] at the time” they were married.
Asked what she wanted to do after the release, a fully veiled al-Dulaimi said that she planned to live in Turkey.
Around them, armed and masked Al-Nusra fighters waved the group’s black flag and chanted slogans.
She spoke from inside an SUV, holding her four-month-old son Youssef, who was born while she was in jail. Four have been killed and nine will remain in captivity after Tuesday’s swap.
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The Nusra Front and ISIS abducted 29 Lebanese soldiers and policemen in Arsal a year ago.
