Syria’s new authorities have arrested a navy justice official who underneath ousted president Bashar al-Assad issued demise sentences for detainees within the infamous Saydnaya jail, a battle monitor mentioned Thursday.
The affirmation by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights of his detention got here a day after lethal clashes erupted within the coastal province of Tartus, an Assad stronghold, when gunmen sought to guard him.
Mohammed Kanjo Hassan is the highest-ranking officer whose arrest has been introduced since Assad’s ousting on December 8.
Assad fled for Russia after an Islamist-led offensive wrested from his management metropolis after metropolis till Damascus fell, ending his clan’s five-decade rule and sparking celebrations in Syria and past.
The offensive caught Assad and his internal circle without warning and whereas fleeing the nation he took with him solely a handful of confidants.
Many others had been left behind, together with his brother Maher al-Assad, who based on a Syrian navy supply fled to Iraq earlier than heading to Russia.
Different collaborators had been believed to have taken refuge of their hometowns in Alawite areas that had been as soon as a stronghold of the Assad clan.
– Hundreds of demise sentences –
In keeping with the Affiliation of Detainees and Lacking Individuals of Saydnaya Jail, Kanjo Hassan headed Syria’s navy area courtroom from 2011 to 2014, the primary three years of the battle that started with Assad’s crackdown on Arab Spring-inspired democracy protests.
He was later promoted to chief of navy justice nationwide, the group’s co-founder Diab Serriya mentioned, including that he sentenced “hundreds of individuals” to demise.
The Saydnaya complicated, the positioning of extrajudicial executions, torture and compelled disappearances, epitomised the atrocities dedicated towards Assad’s opponents.
The destiny of tens of hundreds of prisoners and lacking individuals stays one of the harrowing legacies of his rule.
After 13 years of civil battle, Syria’s new leaders from Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) face the monumental job of safeguarding the multi-confessional, multi-ethnic nation from additional collapse.
With its roots in Syria’s department of Al-Qaeda, a Sunni Muslim jihadist group, HTS has moderated its rhetoric and vowed to make sure safety for minorities, together with the Alawite neighborhood from which Assad hails.
With 500,000 killed within the battle and greater than 100,000 nonetheless lacking, the brand new authorities have additionally pledged justice for the victims of abuses underneath the deposed ruler.
In addition they face the substantial job of restoring safety to a rustic ravaged by battle and the place arms have develop into ubiquitous.
– Hate or revenge –
Throughout the offensive that precipitated Assad’s ousting, rebels flung open the doorways of prisons and detention centres across the nation, letting out hundreds of individuals.
In central Damascus, kinfolk of a few of the lacking have hung up posters of their family members within the hope that with Assad gone, they could at some point study what occurred to them.
World powers and worldwide organisations have referred to as for the pressing institution of mechanisms for accountability.
With the judiciary not but reorganised since Assad’s toppling, it’s unclear how detainees suspected of crimes linked to the previous authorities will likely be tried.
Some members of the Alawite neighborhood worry that with Assad gone, they are going to be prone to assaults from teams hungry for revenge or pushed by sectarian hate.
On Wednesday, offended protests erupted in a number of areas round Syria, together with Assad’s hometown of Qardaha, over a video exhibiting an assault on an Alawite shrine that circulated on-line.
The Observatory mentioned that one demonstrator was killed and 5 others wounded “after safety forces… opened fireplace to disperse” a crowd within the central metropolis of Homs.
On Thursday, the Observatory reported lethal clashes in Homs province between safety forces and gunmen from a gang allegedly concerned in murders and kidnappings underneath the previous authorities.
State information company SANA reported that the preventing erupted when “outlawed teams affiliated with Assad’s militias” attacked the brand new authorities’ forces.
– ‘We would like peace’ –
On Thursday, the data ministry launched a ban on publishing or distributing “any content material or data with a sectarian nature aimed toward spreading division and discrimination”.
In considered one of Wednesday’s protests over the video, giant crowds chanted slogans together with “Alawite, Sunni, we wish peace”.
Assad lengthy introduced himself as a protector of minority teams in Sunni-majority Syria, although critics mentioned he performed on sectarian divisions to remain in energy.
In Homs, the place the authorities imposed a nighttime curfew, 42-year-old resident Hadi reported “an enormous deployment of HTS males in areas the place there have been protests”.
“There may be plenty of worry,” he mentioned.
In coastal Latakia, protester Ghidak Mayya, 30, mentioned that for now, Alawites had been “listening to requires calm”, however that placing an excessive amount of strain on the neighborhood “dangers an explosion”.
Noting the anxieties, Sam Heller of the Century Basis assume tank informed AFP that Syria’s new rulers needed to stability coping with sectarian tensions whereas promising that these liable for abuses underneath Assad can be held accountable.
“However they’re clearly additionally contending with what looks like an actual need on the a part of a few of their constituents for what they might say is accountability, possibly additionally revenge, it relies on the way you wish to characterise it,” he mentioned.
