Five Czechs Missing in Lebanon since July Have Been Found

A security source told Reuters on Monday that the five Czech citizens who went missing in eastern Lebanon in July are now with the Lebanese security services.

The Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs affirmed that the five, who went missing in Lebanon last year, were found late on Monday alive and in “satisfactory health condition.”

“We will send a plane for them as soon as possible,” the Czech foreign minister, Lubomir Zaoralek, on a visit to Oman, said on his Twitter account.

Czech authorities treated the disappearance as a possible kidnapping. Also, Lebanon’s interior minister said in July that it may have been related to organized crime and the drugs and arms trade.

Among the missing Czechs was an attorney to Ali Fayad, a man of Lebanese origin who was in custody in the Czech Republic awaiting a decision on a U.S. extradition request.

The United States has accused Fayad and his accomplices of trying to sell arms and drugs to the Colombian guerrilla group FARC.

According to his office, his Czech lawyer has traveled to Lebanon several times for the case.
The abandoned vehicle of the five Czech nationals and one Lebanese man who went missing was found near Kefraya, in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, in July last year. This incident took place close to where seven Estonian cyclists were kidnapped in 2011 and held for four months.

Neither the security source nor the Czech ministry stated if the Lebanese driver had also been found.