Suheil Hamwi spent 32 years in a Syrian prison, and now, after an offensive by rebel fighters that toppled the government of Bashar al-Assad, he’s finally returned to his home in Lebanon.

In 1992, Hamwi worked as a merchant, selling various goods in the town of Chekka in northern Lebanon. On the night of Eid il-Burbara, or Saint Barbara’s Day — a holiday similar to Halloween — a car filled with men pulled up outside his house and forced him into the vehicle.

It would be years before his family heard from him again.

Hamwi was one of hundreds of Lebanese citizens detained during Syria’s occupation of Lebanon from 1976 to 2005 and believed to be held in Syrian prisons for decades.

On Sunday, freedom came to him and others unexpectedly — prisoners who’d heard rumors about Syria’s opposition forces and their sweeping campaign found that guards had abandoned their posts.

Hamwi and other prisoners left, he said, and he would soon be among the first from Lebanon to reenter the country.

“I’m still scared this might not be real,” he told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday from his home — the same one he left more than three decades ago.

For years after the night of his disappearance, Hamwi’s family didn’t know where he was. It wasn’t until 16 years later that his wife discovered he was imprisoned in Syria. Even then, the reason for his detention remained unclear, Hamwi said.

It took another four years before authorities finally told him the charge, he said: He was detained because he was a member of the Lebanese Forces, a Christian political party that also functioned as a militia during the 15-year Lebanese civil war that ended in 1990.

The party fought against Syrian forces and remained opposed to Syria’s military presence in Lebanon afterward.

He said he spent his first years in Syria’s notorious Saydnaya prison before being transferred to other facilities, eventually ending up in prison in Latakia. Torture marked his early days behind bars, he added, “but that stopped after a while.”

For years, he said, he lived in nearly complete isolation. He was alone in a small cell, surrounded by other Lebanese detainees as well as Palestinians and Iraqis.

In 2008, he said, his wife was able to visit him for the first time. Then she came about once a year.

Last week, there was some buzz in the prison about what was happening outside. “But we didn’t know the dream would reach us,” Hamwi told AP.

Early Sunday morning, chaos erupted as prisoners discovered the guards were gone.

“The first door opened,” Hamwi said, describing how rebels stormed the prison and started opening cell gates. “Then others followed. And for those who couldn’t open their gates, they started coming out through the walls.”

The prisoners left “walking toward the unknown,” he said. “And I walked with them.”

Strangers on the street helped guide him back to Lebanon, Hamwi said. He came into the country through the Arida border crossing in northern Lebanon, where his family waited on the other side.

As Hamwi walked through his door, it was his two grandchildren who greeted him.

“This is the first time I met them,” Hamwi later told AP, his voice tinged with disbelief.

Hawmi has visited a hospital for tests to assess the toll of 32 years in captivity. And he has to relearn life outside prison walls.

He hoped one of the best moments was yet to come: his reunion with only son George, an engineer working in the Gulf.

In their first phone call, Hamwi said, George told him the words he’d been longing to hear: “I miss you. I love you. I’m waiting to see you.”

Syrian rebels, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, on Tuesday appointed Mohammad al-Bashir as head of a transitional government that will be in place until March 1.

According to a statement attributed to Bashir, he is the “new Syrian Prime Minister”.

He also said: “The general command has tasked us with running the transitional government until March 1."

On Sunday, the rebels led by HTS, seized the capital Damascus in a lightning offensive, toppling Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Assad fled the country and is believed to be in Moscow with his family.

Until now, Bashir was the head of the rebels’ Salvation Government in northwest Syria.

According to The New Arab, the Salvation Government, with its own ministries, departments, judicial and security authorities, was set up in the Idlib bastion in 2017 to assist people in the rebel-held area cut off from government services.

It has since begun rolling out assistance in Aleppo, the first major city to fall after the rebels began their offensive.

Who is Mohammed al-Bashir?

Bashir is a Syrian engineer and politician who began serving as the fifth prime minister of the self-declared HTS administration, the Syrian Salvation Government, in January.

He was born in Idlib in 1986, according to a CV published by the Salvation Government. He holds multiple qualifications spanning engineering, law, and administrative planning.

He earned a degree in electrical and electronic engineering, specialising in communications, from the University of Aleppo in 2007.

In 2010, he completed an advanced English language course administered by the ministry of education.

In 2021, he obtained a degree in Sharia and law with honours from the University of Idlib. That same year, he also received a certificate in administrative planning and a certification in project management from the Syrian International Academy for Training, Languages, and Consulting, The New Arab reported.

He then worked as an engineer supervising the establishment of a gas plant affiliated with the Syrian Gas Company.

Developments under Bashir

In 2021, following the Syrian uprising against Assad, Bashir left his job at government institutions, joining "the ranks of the revolutionaries in the military field".

Between 2022 and 2023, he served as the minister of development and humanitarian affairs under his predecessor, Ali Keda.

In January 2024, the Shura Council of the Salvation Government elected him as prime minister.

China is deploying its largest navy fleet in regional waters in nearly three decades, posing a threat to Taiwan that is more pronounced than previous Chinese war games, the Taiwanese defence ministry said on Tuesday.

Speaking in Taipei, defence ministry spokesperson Sun Li-fang said the scale of the current Chinese naval deployment in an area running from the southern Japanese islands down into the South China Sea was the largest since China held war games around Taiwan ahead of 1996 Taiwanese presidential elections.

China's military has yet to comment and has not confirmed it is carrying out any exercises, Reuters reported.

China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory over the island's rejection, had been expected to launch drills to express its anger at President Lai Ching-te's tour of the Pacific that ended on Friday, which included stopovers in Hawaii and the U.S. territory of Guam.

Taiwan's military raised its alert on Monday after saying China had reserved airspace and deployed naval and coast guard vessels.

"The current scale is the largest compared to the previous four," Sun said. "Regardless of whether they have announced drills, they are posing a great threats to us."

Senior ministry intelligence officer Hsieh Jih-sheng told the same press conference there have so far been no live fire drills in China's seven "reserved" air space zones, two of which are in the Taiwan Strait, but there had been a significant increase in Chinese activity to the north of Taiwan over the last day.

The number of China navy and coast guard ships in the region, which a Taiwan security source told Reuters remained at around 90, was "very alarming", and China was taking aim at other countries in the region and not only Taiwan, he added.

China's deployment in the First Island Chain - which runs from Japan through Taiwan, the Philippines and on to Borneo, enclosing China's coastal seas - is aimed at area denial to prevent foreign forces from interfering, Hsieh said.