BEIRUT: Back in Syria, the young women were told they would get well-paid jobs at restaurants and hotels in Lebanon.
But when they arrived, their belongings and mobile phones were taken away, and the women were locked up in two hotels north of Beirut and forced into prostitution.
What followed was an ordeal of beatings, torture and abuse — until Lebanese security forces raided the hotels and dismantled the operation in late March.
The discovery of the sex trafficking ring and the rescue of the women deeply shocked tiny Lebanon, a Mediterranean Arab nation already overwhelmed by the influx of more than a million Syrian refugees who have fled the civil war, and prompted calls for investigation.
The case, which involves 75 female victims, is considered the worst sex trafficking scandal in Lebanon in decades and has raised questions about who might have shielded and enabled such a vast network.
When they were found in the Chez Maurice and Silver Hotel in the town of Maamelteine, 20 km north of the Lebanese capital, the women were said to have been in miserable condition. The three-story Chez Maurice looked more like a jail than a hotel when it was visited by journalists, with bars on balconies and windows.
A whip was seen lying on one of the guard tables. The premises have been sealed off and official documents were stamped on the gates, barring entry.
The Syrian women were brought to Lebanon in stages over the past several months. Those who refused to work as prostitutes were repeatedly raped and tortured until they submitted, according to Lebanese women’s rights activists. “Some reported that they were forced to have sex with 20 clients per day,” said Maya Al-Ammar, an official with women’s rights group Kafa, which is Arabic for “Enough.”
After the women were freed, the Health Ministry sealed a clinic belonging to gynecologist Riad Al-Alam, who authorities say was involved in preforming abortions for trafficked Syrian women who got pregnant.
Lebanese Health Minister Wael Abu Faour said the doctor “should be in prison where he should rot.” Al-Alam’s license has been revoked by a medical workers’ union.
Al-Ammar, the women’s rights activist, said some 200 abortions were carried out at the clinic, though she did not provide the source for the data.
The case of the trafficked Syrians went public after police raided the two hotels and freed the women. Lebanese police spokesman Col. Joseph Msalem said several guards, both male and female, were detained but the two ringleaders remain at large.
According to Msalem, police got the first lead on March 25, the Good Friday holiday in Lebanon, when four Syrian women managed to flee from one of the hotels when the guards briefly became lax in monitoring them.
They took a minibus to an area in south Beirut, where one of them told the bus driver that she knew some people. On the way, the driver noticed something odd about the women and started asking questions after which they told him their story, Msalem said.
The driver called the police and the women were taken to a police station near Beirut.
Syrian women’s sex slavery jolts Lebanon
Syrian women’s sex slavery jolts Lebanon
Hezbollah saw new war with Israel as inevitable and rearmed for months, sources say
- The details of Hezbollah’s recent efforts to rearm have not been previously reported
- The head of Hezbollah’s media office, Youssef Al-Zein, told Reuters that Hezbollah would not comment on its military operations
BEIRUT: Lebanese armed group Hezbollah spent months restocking its arsenal of rockets and drones, using support from Iran and its own weapons factories to prepare for a new war with Israel, six sources familiar with the group’s preparations said.
Down but not out after its devastating 2024 conflict with Israel, Hezbollah had concluded that another round of fighting was inevitable — and that this time, it could face an existential threat, according to the sources.
Reuters spoke to three Lebanese sources briefed on Hezbollah’s activities, two foreign officials in Lebanon and an Israeli military official, who all spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the press.
The details of Hezbollah’s recent efforts to rearm have not been previously reported.
The head of Hezbollah’s media office, Youssef Al-Zein, told Reuters that Hezbollah would not comment on its military operations, though he said the group had decided to “fight to the last breath.”
PAYING SALARIES, REPLENISHING STOCKPILES
Founded by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 1982, Hezbollah launched rockets and drones at Israel on Monday to avenge the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, pulling Lebanon into the war raging across the Middle East.
Although the decision caught some of its own officials off guard, Hezbollah had been readying its military stockpiles and its command-and-control structure for an eventual rematch with Israel, the six sources said.
To do so, it had drawn on a monthly budget of $50 million, most of it from Iran and earmarked for fighters’ salaries, according to one of the Lebanese sources, who has been briefed on the group’s finances and military activities. One of the foreign officials confirmed the $50 million budget.
It was not immediately clear how long the group had been relying on that monthly budget and how it compared to its previous financial resources.
The group has said funds from Iran helped finance rents for people displaced by the 2024 war. Around 60,000 Lebanese, most of them from the Shiite Muslim community from which Hezbollah draws its popular support, remained displaced over the last year, with their homes still in ruins.
Hezbollah had also worked to replenish its drone and rocket stashes through local manufacturing, the first Lebanese source, the foreign officials and the Israeli military official said. The Israeli military official said Hezbollah had used Iranian funding both to smuggle arms and make its own weapons, but added that its manufacturing capability had been diminished.
The second foreign official said the group had stationed new rockets and Iranian-made logistical materials in southern Lebanon before the latest war began.
Hezbollah’s media office did not immediately respond to questions on its rearmament and Iranian support for it.
Israeli military spokesperson Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told Reuters that Hezbollah “had a lot of arms left” and was also seeking to rearm. “They were trying to smuggle and we were preventing that,” Shoshani said.
PACE OF FIRE BUILDS UP
In 2024, a punishing two-month war with Israel ended with a ceasefire brokered by the United States. Hezbollah halted its attacks on Israel, which continued strikes on what it said were Hezbollah’s efforts to rebuild military capabilities.
Israel also kept troops in five hilltop positions in southern Lebanon.
Last year, Lebanon also began confiscating Hezbollah weapons in the country’s south — but Israel said the group was rearming faster than it was being disarmed.
Speaking to Reuters weeks before Hezbollah entered the regional war, the first Lebanese source confirmed that the group had been rebuilding its military capabilities “in parallel” with Israel’s campaign to destroy them.
The pace of Hezbollah’s attacks this week provides clues about its weapons stocks.
The group launched 60 drones and rockets on March 2, the first day it attacked Israel, and a similar number the following day, said the second foreign official, who tracks Hezbollah’s activities closely.
But on March 4, Hezbollah launched more than double that number of projectiles, a sign it had been able to draw from its larger caches, the official said.
ALMA, an Israeli think tank that monitors security on Israel’s northern border, said it assessed that Hezbollah’s arsenal on the eve of its attack included approximately 25,000 rockets and missiles, most of them short- and medium-range.
A video published by Hezbollah on March 4 showed a fighter setting up a drone in a wooded area. Riad Kahwaji, a Dubai-based defense analyst and founder of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, identified the drone in the video as a Shahed-101, which he told Reuters could be produced locally.
HEZBOLLAH EXPECTED A FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL
Hezbollah has also dispatched fighters from its elite Radwan force back to southern Lebanon, Reuters reported this week. They had been withdrawn from the area after the 2024 conflict.
Israeli strikes after the 2024 ceasefire included the targeting of what Israel said were Hezbollah training camps. In late February, the Israeli military said it struck eight military compounds used by the Radwan force to store weapons and prepare for a confrontation.
The Israeli official and the first foreign official said Hezbollah had been struggling to recruit new operatives as a result.
The group lost 5,000 fighters in the 2024 war, an unprecedented blow to its fighting force, though the second Lebanese source said it still had some 95,000 fighters left.
In the lead-up to its entry into the current regional war, Hezbollah had become convinced Israel would carry out a major strike on the group that would seek to “disable its ability to retaliate,” the first Lebanese source said.
A third foreign official familiar with Hezbollah’s thinking said that assessment had driven the group’s decision to launch the first salvo, fearing Israel would eventually turn its attention from Iran to Hezbollah.
“They knew they were next on the list,” the official said.
