Siham Mahmoud has been waiting for two days to know if her husband is still alive or not. Mahmoud’s husband, Awad Ibrahim, is one of the 11 Lebanese Shia pilgrims who were kidnapped in Aleppo four days ago by an unknown group. She says she has no news about Ibrahim other than what she has been seeing on the news. “What we have been seeing on television is exactly what the middle men between us—[Hezbollah leader] Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, [Amal leader] Nabih Berri and the government—have been telling us. No clear news,” she told NOW Lebanon.

Last night Mahmoud was in the crowd at the Beirut International Airport to wait for Ibrahim, as she and other family members had seen on the news that their relatives had been released and handed over to the Turkish authorities. They cheered when they heard the Lebanese government announce the captives’ release and when they found out that former PM Saad Hariri had sent one of his private jets to take the newly released men from Adana to Beirut. [Link]