Syrian fighters execute 35 in three days, war monitor says
Syrian fighters execute 35 in three days, war monitor says
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Authorities have arrested dozens of people accused of taking advantage of the chaos in Syria to settle old scores. Fighters affiliated with Syria’s new leaders have carried out 35 summary executions over 72 hours, mostly of Assad-era officers, a war monitor has said.
The authorities, installed by the rebel forces that toppled longtime president Bashar al-Assad last month, said they had carried out multiple arrests in the western Homs area over unspecified “violations”. Official news agency Sana said the authorities on Friday accused members of a “criminal group” of using a security sweep to commit abuses against residents while “posing as members of the security services”.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said on Sunday that “these arrests follow grave violations and summary executions that had cost the lives of 35 people over the past 72 hours.”. It also said that “members of religious minorities” had suffered “humiliations”.
Most of those executed are former officers in the toppled Assad government who had presented themselves in centres set up by the new authorities, according to the Britain-based monitor, which has a network of sources inside Syria. “Dozens of members of local armed groups under the control of the new Sunni Islamist coalition in power who participated in the security operations” in the Homs area “have been arrested”, the observatory said.
It added that these groups “carried out reprisals and settled old scores with members of the Alawite minority to which Bashar al-Assad belongs, taking advantage of the state of chaos, the proliferations of arms and their ties to the new authorities”.
