A rights group on Thursday urged Lebanese authorities to probe the disappearance of three Syrian brothers, one of whom was detained while distributing flyers calling for democratic change in Syria.

Human Rights Watch said in a statement that Jassem Merhi Jassem was picked up by military intelligence agents in Beirut along with five other members of his family on February 23 and 24 after they were seen handing out the flyers.

Caretaker Interior Minister Ziad Baroud has said that the judiciary was now in charge of handling the case of three Syrians reportedly abducted in Lebanon.

“The case is currently under the jurisdiction of the prosecutor general, and the probe is led by the military judiciary,” Baroud said in a statement released on Wednesday.

U.S. officials have reportedly chided Central Bank governor Riyad Salameh for helping Syria escape U.S. sanctions five years ago by transferring billions of dollars to Lebanon.

Al-Akhbar daily said Thursday that the officials told Salameh during his visit to Washington last week that the Central Bank’s move led to a cover up to illegitimate operations carried out by several Lebanese banks, including alleged money laundering.

March 14 General-Secretariat Coordinator Fares Soaid said a political document that will be issued by the coalition on Thursday stresses the need to put Hizbullah’s arms under the control of legitimate state institutions.

In remarks to Voice of Lebanon radio station, Soaid said the document also says that Hizbullah cannot coexist with citizens who abide by rules and regulations.

Outgoing Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Sfeir reiterated that only Lebanon’s armed forces should carry weapons and described as abnormal the presence of arms in the people’s hands.

In remarks to al-Joumhouriah newspaper published Wednesday, Sfeir said: “We either have a state or we don't. Only the state should own weapons.”

Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea on Tuesday said he believes that there will be “another Cedar Revolution” in Lebanon on Sunday as “the first one did not achieve its objectives.”

In an interview on Future News television, Geagea also said he was convinced that “we can’t advance in any field with the presence of Hizbullah’s arms.”

Iran and Syria found themselves in the spotlight Monday as the U.N. nuclear watchdog convened for its traditional week-long spring meeting.

The International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-member board of governors was set to discuss two new reports showing little or no progress in the watchdog's long-running investigations into Iran's controversial atomic program and allegations of illicit nuclear activity on the part of Syria.

Thirteen jailed Syrian human rights activists, including lawyers Haytham Maleh and Anwar Bunni, are staging a hunger strike at Adra prison, near Damascus, the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights announced Monday.

"We have launched a hunger strike because we demand an end to political detention and injustice, as well as the recovery of stolen civil and political rights," said the activists in a joint statement published by the rights monitor.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi reiterated that Tehran backed an inter-Lebanese agreement to solve the country’s political crisis and stressed that Premier-designate Najib Miqati’s cabinet would not be one-sided.

“We support any agreement that the Lebanese achieve” among themselves, Salehi told al-Akhbar daily in an interview published Monday.

The Syrian embassy has denied a report that Lieutenant Salah al-Hajj, son of former Internal Security Forces chief Ali al-Hajj, had kidnapped Syrian citizen Jassem Merhi al-Jassem in Lebanon.

The denial was published in An Nahar daily on Saturday which a day earlier said that the Syrian opposition in Paris accused Lt. Hajj of kidnapping al-Jassem and detaining him in an unidentified location.