Syria’s new authorities have arrested a military justice official who under ousted president Bashar al-Assad issued death sentences for detainees in the notorious Saydnaya prison, a war monitor said Thursday.
Syria’s new government has detained military justice official Mohammed Kanjo Hassan, who issued death sentences at Saydnaya prison under ousted president Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed Thursday. His arrest follows deadly clashes in Tartus, an Assad stronghold, as gunmen sought to protect him.
The confirmation by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights of his detention came a day after deadly clashes erupted in the coastal province of Tartus, an Assad stronghold, when gunmen sought to protect him.
Mohammed Kanjo Hassan is the highest-ranking officer whose arrest has been announced since Assad’s ousting on December 8.
Assad fled for Russia after an Islamist-led offensive wrested from his control city after city 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 while fleeing the country he took with him only a handful of confidants.
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.
Security forces of the newly formed Syrian government search a car in the Karm Az-Zeitoun neighborhood in Homs, Syria, Thursday, Dec. 26, 2024. © Leo Correa, AP
Thousands of death sentences
According to the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison, Kanjo Hassan headed 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 chief of military justice nationwide, the group’s co-founder Diab Serriya said, adding that he sentenced “thousands of people” to death.
The Saydnaya complex, the site of extrajudicial executions, torture and forced disappearances, epitomized the atrocities committed against Assad’s opponents.
Clerics and members of Syria’s Alawite minority gathered for a meeting in Qardaha, the ancestral village of the Assad family© MUHAMMAD HAJ KADOUR / AFP
‘We want peace’
The transitional authorities appointed by HTS said in a statement that the shrine attack took place early this month, with the interior ministry saying it was carried out by “unknown groups” and that republishing the video served to “stir up strife”.
On Thursday, the information ministry introduced a ban on publishing or distributing “any content or information with 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, though critics said he played on sectarian divisions to stay in power.
In Homs, where the authorities imposed a nighttime curfew, 42-year-old resident Hadi reported “a vast deployment of HTS men in areas where there were protests”.
“There is a lot of fear,” he said.
In coastal Latakia, protester Ghidak Mayya, 30, said that for now, Alawites were “listening to calls for calm”, but putting too much pressure on the community “risks an explosion”.
Noting the anxieties, Sam Heller of the Century Foundation think tank told AFP that Syria’s new rulers had to balance dealing with sectarian tensions while promising that those responsible for abuses under Assad would be held accountable.
“But they’re obviously also contending with what seems like a real desire on the part of some of their constituents for what they would say is accountability, maybe also revenge, it depends on how you want to characterise it,” he said.
(AFP) FRANCE24