Former Islamic State militants claim they saw abducted Italian priest Paolo Dall'Oglio in a prison in northern Syria in late August, the head of a monitoring group told pan-Arab daily 'Al-Sharq al-Awsat' on Tuesday.
Dall'Oglio was being held in an IS prison in the city of al-Tabaqa, west of the IS stronghold of al-Raqqa, Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told the daily, citing the unnamed defectors.
One of the defectors, allegedly a former second-tier leader of IS, said he had seen Dall'Oglio personally during a visit to the prison run by the militant group's so-called 'Uzbek Battalion'.
Dall'Oglio vanished without trace in the IS stronghold of al-Raqqa on 29 July 2013 and earlier this year reports on social media claimed he had been executed in prison.
Chaldean patriarch Monsignor Louis Rapahel Sako said last week he was convinced Dall'Oglio was still alive but church sources told 'Al-Sharq al-Awsat' they had received no information on his fate.
Jacques Mourad, another Jesuit priest, escaped from IS last week after he was kidnapped and held for five months by the extremist group, which overran and destroyed the central Syrian monastery of St. Elian, where he was prior.
But Syrian minorities expert Sulayman Yousef was quoted as telling 'Al-Sharq al-Awsat' the reported sightings of Dall'Oglio in August were "hearsay".
As in the case of two Orthodox bishops Youhanna Ibrahim, Boulos al-Yaziji, who were abducted in April 2013, by gunmen near the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, there is no evidence that Dall'Oglio is still alive, Yousef said.
"No video has been distributed showing them alive, there are no political negotiations taking place and there has been no ransom demand," he said.
"This suggests the priests have been killed," Yousef told the daily.
Dall'Oglio, spent almost 30 years living and working in Syria before being expelled in 2012 for his support for the uprising against president Bashar al-Assad.
