Grief, joy and confusion Loved ones seek hope after rebels' jail release

Oammar Ali has been searching for his older brother for 39 years.

- William Christou

In 1986, student Ali Hassan al-Ali, then aged 18, was arrested by Syrian soldiers at a checkpoint in north Lebanon. He has not heard from him since.

He spent the next three decades visiting different security branches in Syria, where he would receive conflicting information on the whereabouts of his brother.

"There was no place in Syria we didn't visit. We went around the whole country asking what happened to him. One day they would admit they had him in prison, the next day they would deny it," said Moammar, who lives Akkar, north Lebanon.

The last information he was given about his brother was that he was being held in a military security branch in Damascus on charges of political agitation. Then, Syria's revolution and subsequent civil war started and Moammar no longer received any updates.

That was until Thursday night, when his phone started to buzz. Friends and relatives began to send him the same picture: a bedraggled man in his late 50s, standing dazed in front of the Hama central prison in north Syria.

"They said he resembled me. I told them: this is my brother! The feeling... it's indescribable. Imagine that I haven't seen him for 39 years and then all of a sudden his picture is sent to you, how would you feel?" Moammar said.

His brother, who entered prison as an 18-year-old, was now 57. "He has come out of prison as an old man," said Moammar.