Syria’s new authorities have arrested a military justice official under the ousted president Bashar al-Assad issued death sentences to prisoners in the notorious Saydnaya prison, a war monitor said on Thursday.
The confirmation by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights of his detention came a day after deadly clashes broke out in the coastal province of Tartus, an Assad stronghold, as gunmen tried to protect him.
Mohammed Kanjo Hassan is the highest-ranking officer whose arrest has been announced since Assad’s ouster on December 8.
Assad fled for Russia after an Islamist-led offensive wrested city after city from his control until Damascus fell, ending his clan’s five-decade rule and sparking celebrations in Syria and beyond.
The offensive caught Assad and his inner circle by surprise, and when he fled the country he took only a handful of confidants with him.
Many others were left behind, including his brother Maher al-Assad, who, according to a Syrian military source, fled to Iraq before heading to Russia.
Other collaborators were believed to have taken refuge in their hometowns in Alawite regions that were once a stronghold of the Assad clan.
Thousands of death sentences
According to the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison, Kanjo Hassan presided over Syria’s military field court from 2011 to 2014, the first three years of the war that began with Assad’s crackdown on Arab Spring-inspired democracy protests.
He was later promoted to head of military justice nationwide, said the group’s co-founder Diab Serriya, adding that he sentenced “thousands of people” to death.
Saydnaya complex, site of extrajudicial executions, torture and enforced disappearances, symbolized the atrocities committed against Assad’s opponents.
The fate of tens of thousands of prisoners and disappeared people remains one of the most harrowing legacies of his rule.
After 13 years of civil war, Syria’s new leader from Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) faces the monumental task of protecting the multi-confessional, multi-ethnic country from further collapse.
With its roots in the Syria branch of Al-Qaedaa Sunni Muslim jihadist group, HTS has moderated its rhetoric and pledged to ensure protection for minorities, including the Alawite community from which Assad hails.
With 500,000 killed in the war and more than 100,000 still missing, the new authorities have also promised justice for victims of abuses under the ousted ruler.
They also face the significant task of restoring security in a war-torn country where weapons have become ubiquitous.
Hate or revenge
During the offensive that hastened Assad’s ouster, rebels threw open the doors of prisons and detention centers around the country, releasing thousands of people.
In central Damascusrelatives of some of the missing have put up posters of their loved ones in the hope that once Assad is gone, they may one day learn what happened to them.
World powers and international organizations have called for the urgent establishment of accountability mechanisms.
As the judiciary has yet to be reorganized since Assad’s ouster, it is unclear how prisoners suspected of crimes linked to the former authorities will be brought to justice.
Some members of the Alawite community fear that once Assad is gone, they will risk attacks from revenge-seeking groups or driven by sectarian hatred.
On Wednesday, angry protests erupted in several areas around Syria, including Assad’s hometown of Qardaha, over a video showing an attack on an Alawite shrine that circulated online.
The Observatory said one protester was killed and five others wounded “after security forces … opened fire to disperse” a crowd in the central city of Homs.
“We want peace”
The transitional authorities appointed by HTS said in a statement that the shrine attack took place earlier this month, with the interior ministry saying it was carried out by “unknown groups” and that the republishing of the video served to “stir up strife”.
The Information Ministry on Thursday imposed a ban on publishing or distributing “any content or information of a sectarian nature aimed at spreading division and discrimination“.
In one of Wednesday’s protests over the video, large crowds chanted slogans including “Alawite, Sunni, we want peace”.
Assad long presented himself as a protector of minority groups in Sunni-majority Syria, although critics said he played on sectarian divisions to stay in power.
In Homs, where authorities imposed a nighttime curfew, 42-year-old resident Hadi reported “a large deployment of HTS men in areas where there were protests”.
“There’s a lot of fear,” he said.
In coastal Latakia, protester Ghidak Mayya, 30, said that for now the Alawites are “listening to calls for calm”, but putting too much pressure on the community “risks an explosion”.
Sam Heller of the Century Foundation think tank, noting the concerns, told AFP that Syria’s new rulers had to balance dealing with sectarian tensions while promising to hold those responsible for abuses under Assad accountable.
“But they’re also obviously grappling with what seems to be a real desire by some of their constituents for what they would say is accountability, maybe even revenge, it depends how you want to characterize it,” he said.
(AFP)
