Marked by deadly clashes, the operation to arrest General Mohammed Kanjo Hassan was launched on Wednesday by security forces in Tartous, in the west of the country, bastion of the Alawite minority from which Mr. Assad, overthrown December 8 by a coalition of rebels led by the radical Sunni Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
The head of military justice under Bashar al-Assad, promoted to this position in 2014, was arrested in the locality of Khirbet al-Ma’zah with 20 members of his close guard, said the OSDH.
Mohammed Kanjo Hassan sentenced “thousands of people to death during speedy trials”, Diab Seria, co-founder of the Association of Detainees and Missing of Saydnaya Prison (ADMSP), told AFP.
This penitentiary center, built in the 1980s during the reign of Hafez al-Assad – Bashar’s father – to house political detainees, has become a symbol of the Syrian state’s ruthless control over its citizens.
According to the ADMSP, around 30,000 people had been detained at Saydnaya since 2011, some subjected to the worst torture, of whom only 6,000 had been released.
The association estimates the fortune made by Mohammed Kanjo Hassan at some $150 million at the expense of families of detainees who paid for information about their loved ones, which was never given.
The arrest of “one of the criminals of the Assad regime”, “represents an important step towards obtaining justice and prosecuting the criminals”, rejoiced on X the Syrian opposition Coalition, which brings together the main political groups in exile.
His arrest was marked by violence after armed men tried to prevent security forces from capturing him. Fourteen members of the security forces and seven armed men died in 24 hours, according to the OSDH.
The operation in Tartous made it possible to “neutralize a certain number” of “militiamen” loyal to the deposed president, the official Sana agency said. The objective is to “restore security”
On Wednesday, thousands of Alawites demonstrated in Tartous, Banias, Jableh, and Latakia (west) as well as in Homs (center), after the broadcast of a video on social networks showing fighters attacking one of their sanctuaries in Aleppo (north), according to the OSDH. Five sanctuary employees were killed.
These Alawite demonstrations are the first since the overthrow of Mr. Assad, who fled with his family to Moscow in the wake of the rebel offensive who took control of most of the country in 11 days.
Authorities said the video was from the rebels’ capture of Aleppo on Dec. 1, and the information ministry warned Thursday that it was “strictly prohibited to broadcast or publish any information aimed at sowing division.” “.
The new authorities are striving to reassure the international community and Syrians, pledging to respect the rights of minorities in a country traumatized by 13 years of a devastating war, triggered in 2011 by the brutal repression of pro-democracy demonstrations, and which left more than 500,000 dead.
Analyst Sam Heller of the Century Foundation told AFP of a “certain degree of anxiety” among minorities. “Information about attacks (…) accentuates their feeling of vulnerability”.
Elsewhere in Syria, clashes broke out in the north-west of Homs province between pro-Assad armed men and security forces, four members of whom were killed, the Observatory said. The Sana agency claimed that “outlaw groups linked to Assad’s militias” had attacked security forces.
A witness reported “a significant deployment of HTS men in neighborhoods where residents demonstrated the day before” in the city of Homs. “Cars are searched, people are afraid.”
In Latakia, armed fighters, most of them hooded, fired into the air in the middle of heavy traffic and residential buildings, according to an AFP correspondent on the spot. One of them calls for “neutralizing” the pro-Assad movement.
In the capital Damascus, the roads leading to the predominantly Alawite district of Mazeh 86 are blocked, noted an AFP correspondent. “No entry,” said an HTS fighter at a checkpoint.
