BEIRUT - Head of the Mar Thecla monastery in Maalula, Mother Pelagia Sayyaf, said that a Lebanese security officer asked her to thank Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Khalifa al-Thani for the nuns’ release from detention by Al-Nusra Front.

“Before we arrived to the border crossing where the reception ceremony was held, he told me that I should thank President Bashar al-Assad, Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Khalifa al-Thani and Lebanon’s General Security commander General Abbas Ibrahim, and I did what he told me,” Sayyaf told As-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper.

“They offered me a paper bag of crosses with the photo of Our Lady of Harrissa on it. They told me it was [a gift] from General Abbas Ibrahim and asked us to wear the crosses,” she added.

The nun denied that the Syrian regime placed the nuns under house arrest as a reaction to her statement that the kidnappers treated them nicely.

“We are currently staying in one of the Orthodox Patriarchate’s houses in Central Damascus,” she said.

“The nuns are living their lives normally [in Damascus], and we are waiting for the security circumstances in Maalula to become favorable for us to return to the monastery.”

The nuns were released on March 10 thanks to Lebanese-Qatari mediation and handed to the Syrian authorities.

The release was secured in exchange for some 150 women prisoners who were being held in Syria's regime jails.

The 13 nuns and three maids were kidnapped from the famed Christian hamlet of Maalula and taken to the nearby Syrian rebel town of Yabrud, where they were held by Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front.

Speaking to reporters at the border, Mother Pelagia Sayyaf said: "We want to thank God, who made it possible for us to be here now. We thank President Bashar al-Assad for being in contact with the emir of Qatar [Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani].”

"We will not forget the honest mediator, Abbas Ibrahim," she added, in reference to Lebanon's General Security agency director.

Sayyaf also said all 16 hostages were treated "well" in captivity, and that the Al-Nusra Front "were giving us everything we asked for.”

Her comments infuriated pro-regime media and supporters who accused her of treason and asked for her exile.