In the northern Lebanon town of Chekka, Suheil Hamawi received a heartfelt welcome as he returned home after languishing for 33 years in deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's jails. A day earlier, as Assad fled the country, Islamist-led rebels captured the Syrian capital and released thousands of prisoners from his notorious jail system. "Today I feel like I can breathe again. The best thing in this world is freedom," Hamawi, 61, told, visibly tearing up from joy. Hamawi's release gave renewed hope to hundreds of families in Lebanon who have demanded to know of the fate of thousands of prisoners believed to have disappeared at the hands of Syrian troops who entered Lebanon shortly after the outbreak of the 1975-1990 civil war.

Hamawi said he was moved from one prison to another, even spending time in the notorious Saydnaya facility where he wrote poetry, before ending up in a jail in the coastal Latakia region. His love for his wife Josephine Homsi and for his son fuelled him during his time in prison. "I was far away but she was my source of strength, the other was my son," he said. Homsi was overjoyed to be reunited with her husband. "Thirty-three years ago, they came to this house, knocked on our door one evening and told my husband: we need to talk to you. Then he disappeared for 11 years," Homsi said. After she managed to track him down, she spent more than a decade visiting him in Syrian prisons, she said, hoping they would one day be reunited.

Rights groups say thousands of men, women and children disappeared at the hands of Hafez al-Assad, Bashar's late father, during Lebanon's civil war. Hamawi's twin Nicolas told seeing his long lost brother had given him a new sense of purpose. "Today, we've been reborn," he said, adding the pair now felt "truly like twins" again. "My brother is more than a hero. He endured life in prison, and today he has returned to live in freedom like he has been longing to for 33 years," he said. For three decades, Syria was a dominant military and political force in Lebanon, before withdrawing its troops in 2005 under international pressure after the assassination of Lebanese ex-prime minister Rafic Hariri. "I waited a lot, I suffered a lot, but I achieved freedom," Hamawi said.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP)