Lebanon “mass grave” blamed on Syrians is a 17th-century cemetery

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BEIRUT - Bodies found in eastern Lebanon were lying in a cemetery at least 350 years old, the public prosecutor said, not in a mass grave linked to a Syrian military intelligence base as some politicians had speculated.

Security forces said in December they had unearthed about 25 decomposed bodies buried in the village of Anjar, home to the Syrian military intelligence headquarters in Lebanon for three decades until the withdrawal of Syrian troops in April 2005.

Anti-Syrian politicians immediately declared the find was evidence of atrocities committed by Syrian forces who had entered Lebanon in 1976 to quell a civil war.

But Lebanon’s public prosecutor, Saeed Mirza, said in a statement published in local newspapers on Wednesday his investigation showed the most recent remains in the cemetery were 50 years old and the oldest dated back more than 350 years.