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Free Malaysia Today
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Free Malaysia Today
Israel's army says it seized Hamas members in Syria
Since taking over, interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa has said repeatedly that Syria does not want conflict with its neighbours. (EPA Images pic) JERUSALEM : The Israeli army said today that its soldiers seized several suspected members of Palestinian rebel group Hamas in a 'targeted' operation in southern Syria. Syrian authorities did not immediately comment on the raid, but Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said one man was killed and seven seized during the raid on Beit Jinn, 12km from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Since the overthrow of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria aimed at denying military assets to the Islamist-led interim administration, which it regards as jihadist. It has also deployed troops across the demilitarised zone on the Syrian side of the armistice line that used to separate the opposing forces on the Golan. The Israeli military said troops carried out a 'targeted, intelligence-based nighttime operation in Syria and apprehended several Hamas terrorists'. It alleged that those seized were plotting attacks on Israeli troops. The Observatory said a 'major Israeli force' raided Beit Jinn overnight, calling out the names of several young men and arresting seven of them before taking them to 'an unknown location'. 'During the operation, Israeli forces opened fire on a young man near his home, instantly killing him,' the monitor added. It said the dead man and all of those detained were Syrian 'civilians'. The raid comes days after the Israeli army said it 'struck a Hamas terrorist in the area of Mazraat Beit Jinn', which neighbours Beit Jinn. In early June, Israel reported rocket fire from Syrian-held territory towards the Israeli-occupied Golan, the first since Assad's overthrow, and retaliated with a series of strikes on the country. Since taking over in December, interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa has said repeatedly that Syria does not want conflict with its neighbours, urging international pressure on Israel to halt its attacks.
Free Malaysia Today
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Free Malaysia Today
3 Alawites killed after attack on Syrian government forces
Sectarian massacres in the Alawite heartland saw security forces kill more than 1,700 civilians in March. (EPA Images pic) BEIRUT : Three Alawite civilians were killed in western Syria overnight, hours after an attack on government forces killed at least one officer, a war monitor said on Wednesday. Syrian authorities said four civilians were targeted by unknown attackers in the Tal Kalakh area near the Lebanese border, killing two of them. Since an offensive toppled longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December, the Alawite community, which he hails from, has been repeatedly attacked. Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the three civilians were killed in Baruha village by 'local armed groups' who also set fire to shops and cars. The head of security in Homs province, Murhaf Naasan, said: 'Four civilians were directly targeted by unknown people, killing two of them and critically wounding two others.' The deaths came hours after Syria's state-run Sana news agency reported that a security officer had been killed in an attack in the Tal Kalakh area. In March, sectarian massacres in the Alawite heartland on Syria's Mediterranean coast saw security forces and allied groups kill more than 1,700 civilians, mostly Alawites, according to the observatory's figures. The government accused Assad loyalists of sparking the violence by launching coordinated attacks on security forces. The government has since launched an inquiry.
LBCI
05-06-2025
- Politics
- LBCI
Syria monitor says 3 Alawites dead in security operation
A monitor said Thursday that three members of Syria's Alawite minority were killed and property torched during a security operation a day earlier in the coastal province of Latakia. Provincial authorities declared a curfew in the Latakia towns of Beit Ana and nearby Dalia on Wednesday, saying a security operation followed an attack on "a telecommunications center in the Dalia area by an outlaw group". In a statement on social media, the authorities later announced the arrest of "number of those involved", without reporting any casualties. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that "security forces descended on the town of Beit Ana on Wednesday evening" and set fire to homes "as well as a school, a shopping area and a sports club during a security operation". "Two young men from the village, one of them with special needs, were shot dead" during the operation, while the body of a third man was also found with gunshot wounds, said the Observatory. Houses were set alight in Dalia and a number of men were arrested. AFP
Arab News
05-06-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
After decades in Assad jails, political prisoner wants justice
DAMASCUS: Syrian fighter pilot Ragheed Tatari was 26 when he was arrested. Now 70, the country's longest-serving political prisoner is finally free after Bashar Assad's fall, seeking justice and accountability. Tatari, arrested in 1981 and sentenced to life behind bars, was among scores of prisoners who walked free when longtime ruler Assad was overthrown on December 8 in an Islamist-led offensive. He has made it out alive after 43 years in jail, but tens of thousands of Syrian families are still searching for their loved ones who disappeared long ago in Syria's hellish prison system. 'I came close to death under torture,' Tatari told AFP in his small Damascus apartment. Since a military field court gave him a life sentence for 'collaborating with foreign countries' — an accusation he denies — Tatari was moved from one prison to another, first under late president Hafez Assad and then his son Bashar who succeeded him in 2000. Showing old pictures of him in his pilot uniform, Tatari said he was not seeking revenge, but stressed that 'everyone must be held accountable for their crimes.' 'We do not want anyone to be imprisoned' without due process, said Tatari. More than two million Syrians were jailed under the Assad dynasty's rule, half of them after anti-government protests in 2011 escalated into civil war, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor. The Britain-based monitor says around 200,000 died in custody. Diab Serriya, co-founder of the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison, said that Tatari was 'the longest-serving political prisoner in Syria and the Middle East.' Rights group Amnesty International has called the notorious Saydnaya prison outside Damascus a 'human slaughterhouse.' Tatari had been detained there, but he said his 15 years in the Palmyra prison in the Syrian desert were the most difficult. The Palmyra facility operated 'without any discipline, any laws and any humanity,' Tatari said. Detainees were 'not afraid of torture — we wished for death,' he added. 'Everything that has been said about torture in Palmyra... is an understatement.' 'A guard could kill a prisoner if he was displeased with him,' Tatari said, adding that inmates were forced under torture to say phrases like 'Hafez Assad is your god,' although he refused to do so. In 1980, Palmyra witnessed a massacre of hundreds of mostly Islamist detainees, gunned down by helicopters or executed in their cells after a failed assassination attempt on Hafez Assad. Tatari said he was completely disconnected from the outside world there, only learning of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union through a prisoner who had returned from a hospital visit. In Sweida prison in the south, where Tatari was transferred after the 2011 revolt began, some inmates had phones that they would keep hidden from the guards. 'The cell phone gets you out of prison, it makes you feel alive,' he said, recalling how he used to conceal his device in a hole dug in his cell. But after his phone was discovered, he was transferred to a prison in Tartus — his final detention facility before gaining freedom. Tatari was one of several military officers who were opposed to Syria's intervention in Lebanon in 1976, and to the violent repression in the early 1980s of the Muslim Brotherhood, Syria's main opposition force at the time. 'Many of us were against involving the army in political operations,' he said. After two of his fellow pilots defected and fled to Jordan in 1980, he escaped to Egypt and then on to Jordan. But he returned when security forces began harassing his family and was arrested on arrival. His wife was pregnant at the time with their first and only son. For years, the family assumed Tatari was dead, before receiving a proof of life in 1997 after paying bribes, a common practice under the Assads' rule. It was then that Tatari was finally able to meet his son, then aged 16, under the watchful eye of guards during the family's first authorized prison visit that year. 'I was afraid... I ended the meeting after 15 minutes,' Tatari said. His wife has since died and their son left Syria, having received threats at the start of the protest movement, which had spiralled into war and eventually led to Assad's overthrow. During his time behind bars, Tatari said he 'used to escape prison with my thoughts, daydreams and drawing.' 'The regime getting toppled overnight was beyond my dreams... No one expected it to happen so quickly.'
LBCI
04-06-2025
- Politics
- LBCI
Syria monitor says five Alawites found dead after detention
Five men from Syria's Alawite minority were found dead in a Damascus hospital two days after being detained by security forces, a war monitor said Wednesday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the bodies were discovered at Al-Mujtahid hospital on Tuesday, two days after the men had been stopped at a checkpoint. It said they had been "summarily executed." AFP
