A retired Syrian general who commanded forces fighting ISIS was abducted by personnel from the Syrian embassy in Lebanon, Al-Akhbar reported on Saturday.
Adel Issa, an Alawite brigadier general from Tartous, entered the Syrian embassy in Beirut at 12:30 pm on Friday to arrange a power of attorney for a relative. His Syrian driver waited outside for him, but he never returned. As his driver waited outside, a car with several young men stopped and demanded that the driver hand over the retired general's phone, claiming they needed to register his passport.
The driver waited for Issa until 4:30 pm before going to the embassy entrance to inquire about him. A Lebanese guard prevented him from entering, telling him the embassy had closed an hour before.
After persisting, the driver was able to speak with an embassy employee who told him that Issa had left the embassy 20 minutes earlier. This surprised the driver, as Issa never came out of the embassy to have the driver take him home.
The driver then informed the general's family of the incident. They began making calls to locate him, but his phone was switched off after 3:30 pm.
The family contacted several Lebanese organizations for help in determining his fate, fearing he might have been illegally detained at the embassy, given his status as an Alawite officer in the deposed government of Bashar al-Assad. There were also fears that he might be transferred to Syria and subjected to torture.
Since the fall of Assad's government in October 2024, Syria's new authorities, led by the former Al-Qaeda leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, have detained thousands of Alawite officers from the former army.
Syrian authorities claim they are detained for committing war crimes during the 14-year war that began in 2011. However, in practice they are typically detained based on their religious identity as Alawites.
According to a December 2025 report by Reuters, Syria's prisons are overflowing with Alawite men who are held without trial and often tortured.
Al-Akhbar notes that Brigadier General Issa had retired more than six years ago. He continued to live in Tartous and move around Syria without being pursued by the new authorities.
He gave a statement before a Syrian court a few months ago regarding a financial dispute with someone without being arrested or prosecuted, as there was no warrant or legal case against him. However, roughly one month ago, a group of unknown armed men raided Issa's home and inquired about him.
Issa was unable to determine whether the armed men were from the official Syrian security forces or from an armed faction affiliated with the new government but operating outside the chain of command. As a result, Issa decided to leave Syrian territory for Lebanon.
The Syrian Justice Archive (SJA) noted that after news emerged of the detention of the retired general, an attempt was made to cover up his abduction at the embassy and make it appear as if it was part of a legal process.
Saudi newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat claimed that Lebanese authorities had arrested Issa and requested his judicial file from their Syrian counterparts to decide whether to hand him over to Syrian authorities. SJA notes that the evidence indicates that Issa was taken by Syrian embassy personnel, not by Lebanese prosecutors or police.
"If Syria wanted his arrest and extradition, the proper procedure would have been for the Syrian Prosecutor General to formally request his arrest and handover through the Lebanese authorities, not for him to be abducted while visiting the embassy after legally leaving Syria," SJA stated.
The Syrian embassy admitted later on Saturday that Issa had been held inside the embassy and that embassy staff then handed him over to Lebanese security authorities after he had spent more than a day detained inside the embassy.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that Issa commanded the Syrian army's 17th Division. In 2015, he was given command of all Syrian ground forces in the eastern governorate of Deir Ezzor, which borders Iraq, before he retired in late 2016.
Under Issa's command, the 17th Division was responsible for protecting Deir Ezzor from ISIS, of which self-appointed Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa's armed group, the Nusra Front, is an offshoot. The Nusra Front was later rebranded as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
Another scandal emerged last week when journalist Lindsey Snell reported that the Nusra Front member, Mohamad Qanatari, who had kidnapped her in northern Syria in 2016, had been named as charge d'affaires to the Syrian Embassy in Washington.
In 2012, Nusra was designated as a terrorist group by both the UN and the US State Department, despite covert US support for the group. Since HTS and Sharaa came to power, the US government has openly embraced members of the former terror group, including Sharaa himself, who visited the White House to meet US President Donald Trump in November 2025.
SJA reports that another disturbing incident involving the Syrian embassy in Beirut occurred earlier this week when a Syrian social media influencer, Hussein Abdul Qader al-Ahmad, was abducted after making a video for social media in front of the embassy.
In the video, Ahmad criticized the new extremist-dominated Syrian authorities, including President Sharaa – who formerly went by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Julani and is well known for dispatching suicide bombers and car bombs to kill thousands of civilians in Iraq and Syria.
After his abduction at the Lebanese-Syrian border, Ahmad appeared on Syrian government media in detention with visible marks on his forehead, suggesting that he was subjected to abuse or torture. He is now detained on charges of “insulting state symbols” and “provoking the feelings of Syrians.”