BEIRUT: The daughter of Syrian dissident Shibli Aisamy, Rajaa Sharafeddine, hit back Friday at comments suggesting her father had been killed, saying the family had received confirmation that the 86-year-old is being held in Syria.

“We have received confirmation from a number of sources that my father was kidnapped in Lebanon and taken to Syria where he is being held,” Sharafeddine told The Daily Star.

She was responding to comments made by Baath Party official and Baalbek-Hermel MP Assem Qanso Thursday in which he said it “is not unlikely” that Druze leader Walid Jumblatt and Aley MP Akram Shehayeb “oversaw the liquidation of Aisamy.”

“I don’t care what [Qanso] says. I care about what officials say concerning this case,” Sharafeddine said.

She slammed Qanso and people of the like who “are not objective and issue remarks that are not based on facts.

“We have not accused anybody of my father’s kidnapping. All we want is to have him back with us,” Sharafeddine said.

“His kidnapping is inhuman due to his old age,” she added.

“Kidnapping of innocent and elderly people in general is ruthless.”

Aisamy, who fled Syria in 1966 over political differences with then-President Hafez Assad, was abducted in May in Aley, minutes after leaving his daughter’s home for a walk.

Sharafeddine said that she was confident of a September report by police chief Maj. Gen. Ashraf Rifi in which he said investigations into Aisamy’s abduction were not yet complete.

Rifi said that the data collected so far indicated similarities between his kidnapping and those of the four brothers from the Jasem family, who Rifi said had been kidnapped by ISF personnel working at the Syrian Embassy in Beirut.