BEIRUT — Al-Monitor obtained official information confirming that the authorities in Beirut have received reliable reports that the two bishops who were kidnapped in northern Syria on April 23 — Yohanna Ibrahim and Boulos Yazigi — are still alive. This information indicated that Turkish governmental and intelligence agencies provided information to Beirut about the health of the abducted Christian clerics. However, in the past few weeks, there was confusion among these agencies. The Turkish government had been mistaken regarding the identity of one of the bishops, confusing him with one of his aides (a deacon), who was killed by the abductors. On the other hand, a second intelligence party was confused regarding another detail.
For months, informants for these agencies had been providing the Turkish authorities with information that the two bishops were being held in a Syrian region south of Azaz, which was under the control of the armed opposition. These informants said that the abductors were regularly allowing the bishops to go out on short daily walks in an area that the informants for the intelligence agencies were surveilling. A few weeks ago, these informants noticed that these outings only included one man. This led some parties to infer that one of the bishops had been killed.
Just a few days ago, however, these agencies confirmed that their informants had once again seen the "two abducted men" taking a short outing in the area where they are detained. Thus, they were able to inform Beirut that the bishops are still alive. Yet the agencies did not provide any explanation for why one of the men was absent in the past — if it was due to an emergency health issue or if one bishop had been temporarily transferred to another group of kidnappers.
The official information provided to Al-Monitor revealed that the party who carried out the kidnapping on April 23 is the same group that is still holding the bishops now. It is an extremist Sunni group with links to Chechen jihadist groups that are now operating in Syria. However, the group that carried out the kidnapping experienced recently some developments in its organizational relations, especially after the severe fragmentation of jihadist groups and the increasing insecurity and chaos in northern Syria.
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