Syrian security forces ‘oversaw’ armed civilians who killed Alawites, accused man says

One of many males accused of collaborating in a wave of sectarian violence in opposition to Syria’s Alawite minority two months in the past has instructed the BBC that he and different armed civilians who travelled to the world had been suggested and monitored by authorities forces there.

Abu Khalid mentioned he had travelled as a civilian fighter to the Mediterranean coastal village of Sanobar on 7 March, to assist battle former regime insurgents.

“The Common Safety division instructed us to not hurt civilians, however solely to shoot at insurgents who shot at us,” he instructed me.

“There have been eight males with me, nevertheless it was a big group, and the Common Safety division was overseeing issues in order that no-one would vandalise the village or hurt the residents.”

He later filmed himself taking pictures lifeless a 64-year-old village resident, Mahmoud Yusef Mohammed, on the entrance to his home.

Abu Khalid, who has now been arrested, insisted Mahmoud was an armed rebel – however video he filmed of the incident doesn’t help his account.

Army police instructed the BBC there had been no coordination between safety forces and Abu Khalid.

Human rights teams estimate that just about 900 civilians, primarily Alawites, had been killed by pro-government forces throughout Syria’s coastal area in early March.

The Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shia Islam and its followers make up round 10% of Syria’s inhabitants, which is majority Sunni.

Syria’s coastal space – a stronghold of the previous regime – has been largely sealed off, however a BBC workforce gained entry, chatting with witnesses and safety officers about what occurred in Sanobar.

The violence got here a day after fighters loyal to the nation’s overthrown former President Bashar al-Assad, who’s an Alawite, led lethal raids on authorities safety forces.

The brand new Sunni Islamist-led authorities had known as for help from varied army models and militia teams to reply to these raids – however that escalated right into a wave of sectarian anger geared toward Alawite civilians.

Witnesses instructed the BBC that a number of totally different armed teams had focused Alawites for abstract executions. Some additionally mentioned that authorities safety forces had battled violent and extremist factions to guard Alawite villagers from assault.

When the violence alongside this coast erupted, the village of Sanobar was proper in its path. Some 200 individuals had been worn out from this small Alawite village, over the course of some days in early March.

Virtually two months after the killings, there have been no funerals in Sanobar.

A mass grave now squats beside the winding village highway. Hurried burials have cleared the remaining corpses.

That is now a village of girls and secrets and techniques. Most survivors are nonetheless too scared to talk brazenly however their tales, shared with us privately, are sometimes strikingly comparable.

The physique of Mahmoud Yousef Mohammed lay outdoors his easy breeze-block home in Sanobar for 3 days after he was shot lifeless.

His spouse, daughter and grandchildren, sheltering in a neighbour’s home, had been too afraid to emerge from hiding and bury him, as armed teams roamed the village.

His household mentioned Mahmoud was a well mannered man, identified and revered within the village; a farmer with a army background, who typically labored as a minibus driver.

His home, on a quiet avenue on the fringe of the village, stands lower than 300m (985ft) from the primary freeway the place, on 6 March, military officers from Syria’s former regime led co-ordinated assaults on the nation’s new safety forces.

For 2 days, authorities forces battled former regime fighters, identified domestically as “filoul” (“remnants”), within the villages alongside this coastal freeway, calling for help from allied militia teams who helped push Bashar al-Assad from energy final yr.

An array of armed supporters responded to the decision, together with overseas jihadist fighters, civilians and armed models now nominally a part of the brand new Syrian military, however nonetheless not absolutely below authorities management. All are teams now accused by survivors of civilian executions.

All day on 7 March, Sanobar residents listened to the sounds of intense combating across the village, as households hid of their homes.

Then the concentrating on of civilians started.

“All day, many teams entered our home,” one survivor from Sanobar instructed me. “They weren’t from the [military] teams primarily based right here, however from Idlib, Aleppo and elsewhere. Some wore camouflage uniforms. However the ones who killed us had been carrying inexperienced uniforms with a masks.”

“They stole all the things, insulted us, threatened the youngsters,” she continued. “The final group got here round 6pm. They requested, ‘The place are the lads?’ and took my father and my brother Ali. We begged them to not kill them. They mentioned, ‘You are Alawite, pigs,’ and shot them in entrance of our eyes.”

A while that day, Mahmoud stepped outdoors the constructing he was sheltering in together with his household. One in all his kin mentioned he might odor poisonous fumes from a hearth close by, and wished to examine on his personal home.

He by no means reappeared.

“We discovered the subsequent morning that he had been killed,” the relative instructed us.

The story of what occurred to Mahmoud started to emerge when a video of his killing surfaced on social media, filmed by the person who shot him.

Within the video, Abu Khalid is seen grinning and taunting Mahmoud from the again of a motorcycle earlier than taking pictures him six occasions.

To fulfill Abu Khalid, we travelled to Idlib, the heartland of transitional President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s Islamist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which swept Syria’s previous regime from energy final December.

Now in army police custody pending an investigation, Abu Khalid shuffled into the room, blinking and stretching as his blindfold and handcuffs had been eliminated.

A younger man in camouflage pants, he appeared eager to speak, explaining that Mahmoud was not a civilian, however an rebel who was combating within the village that day, and had been carrying an 8.5mm-calibre rifle when he shot him.

“I turned the digicam on him and instructed him to sit down down,” Abu Khalid instructed me. “He was working away and he wished to kill me, so I shot him within the shoulder and the leg. Once I bought nearer, I noticed him shifting his hand as if he had a bomb or a gun. I used to be afraid, so I killed him.”

However the video Abu Khalid filmed of the taking pictures – its location and timing verified by the BBC – doesn’t help his account.

A former member of the British particular forces confirmed that there was no weapon seen on or close to Mahmoud at any level within the video.

And at no level does Abu Khalid ask the 64-year-old to cease or sit down – nor does he seem scared or below risk.

As an alternative, he’s proven whooping and grinning on the again of the bike, earlier than calling out to Mahmoud, “I’ve caught you, I’ve caught you! Have a look at the digicam!”

He then shoots him 3 times in fast succession. Mahmoud falls to his knees contained in the doorway of his home.

“You did not die?!” Abu Khalid calls out, as he follows him to the constructing.

Mahmoud might be heard begging for his life, earlier than Abu Khalid shoots him three extra occasions at shut vary.

Worldwide legislation forbids the killing of civilians, the injured, or disarmed fighters.

Khaled Moussa, from the army police unit now holding Abu Khalid, mentioned he had gone to combat in Sanobar with out coordination with the safety forces.

“Civilians are usually not purported to be there throughout army operations,” Mr Moussa mentioned. “He made a mistake. He might have captured the particular person, however as an alternative he killed him.”

However Abu Khalid has little remorse for what he did.

When he cries throughout our interview, it is not for Mahmoud – and even for himself. It is for his little brother, killed in a bomb assault by President Assad’s former military in 2018 as his household sat down at dwelling to interrupt their Ramadan quick.

“He was eight years previous, and I held him whereas his soul left his physique,” he instructed me, earlier than tears begin flowing down his face.

“I used to be raised throughout the revolution, and noticed nothing however injustice, blood, killing and terror. They ignore all the things that occurred in Syria earlier than the liberation, and give attention to the video I filmed.”

He tells me his household’s newest casualty was his 17-year-old cousin, killed whereas combating insurgents close to Sanobar. “He was utterly burned,” he mentioned. “We took him away in a plastic bag.”

“If I used to be going for revenge for what they did to us, I would not have left any of them.”

The rebel assaults on 6 March ripped open sectarian fault-lines that Syria’s new Islamist authorities had tried to paper over with guarantees of tolerance and inclusion.

The Syrian Community for Human Rights (SNHR), an unbiased monitoring group, says former regime loyalists killed at the least 446 civilians, together with 30 youngsters and girls, and greater than 170 authorities safety forces, most of them on 6 March.

These assaults resurrected deep-seated anger over the repressive dictatorship of former President Assad, with Alawite civilians seen by some as complicit within the crimes of his regime – and as a part of the insurgency that adopted his fall.

The SNHR says the federal government’s crackdown on insurgents on the coast “escalated into widespread and extreme violations”, most of which had been “retaliatory and sectarian”.

The group says that pro-government forces and supporters killed at the least 889 civilians, together with 114 youngsters and girls, within the days following the rebel assaults.

Amnesty Worldwide has investigated dozens of assaults it says had been “deliberate”, “illegal” and focused at Alawite civilians.

One video from Sanobar exhibits a pro-government fighter marching by means of the village chanting, “ethnic cleaning, ethnic cleaning”.

Lists of victims from the village, compiled by native activists, embrace the names of greater than a dozen ladies and kids, together with an 11-year-old, a pregnant girl and a disabled man.

The survivor who watched gunmen kill her father and brother mentioned the household confirmed their killers the lads’s civilian ID playing cards to show they hadn’t been a part of Assad’s military. However it made no distinction; their solely accusation, she mentioned, was that the household had been “Alawite pigs”.

Separating civilians from insurgents is vital to the brand new authorities’s plan to safe the nation, and its promise to guard minorities.

However that can require prosecuting these accountable – and proving it will probably management its personal army forces and armed allies.

Sharaa’s HTS group – as soon as the native affiliate of al-Qaeda and nonetheless designated as a terrorist organisation by the UN, US and UK – fashioned the spine of his new military.

There was speedy recruitment to fill the ranks of a brand new civilian police and the Common Safety Forces.

Coaching has reportedly been shortened and plenty of models say they’re under-equipped. One commander regarded wistfully at my body-armour and radio once we joined them on a patrol. “We do not have these,” he mentioned.

Turkish-backed militia and jihadist fighters who as soon as fought alongside HTS to take away Bashar al-Assad are amongst these named by witnesses and human rights teams as finishing up abstract executions.

Within the streets of Sanobar, the names of Turkish-backed models, now supposedly below authorities management, have been graffitied on the partitions, and the BBC heard a number of reviews that their males had been nonetheless current within the village.

Some movies of alleged violations additionally seem to point out the presence of autos and uniforms from the official Common Safety Forces – prompting Amnesty Worldwide to name for investigation.

The top of the Common Safety Forces for the Latakia area, Mustafa Kunaifati, instructed me that civilians with associates or kin within the military had been answerable for many of the crimes, however admitted that members of armed teams had additionally been concerned – together with what he known as “particular person instances” from his personal Common Safety models.

“It occurred,” he mentioned, “and people members had been additionally arrested. We will not settle for one thing like that.”

After the previous regime fighters had been expelled and the state of affairs introduced below management, he mentioned his males “started eradicating all of the rioters from the world and arresting anybody who had harmed civilians”.

A number of witnesses have confirmed to the BBC that Mr Kunaifati’s forces intervened to guard them from different armed teams.

One in all Mahmoud’s neighbours in Sanobar instructed us they evacuated him and his household half-hour earlier than Mahmoud was killed.

And the witness who described the killing of her father and brother mentioned the Common Safety Forces had helped them escape the village, and later to return and bury their kin.

Sharaa has vowed that “no-one will probably be above the legislation” in terms of prosecuting the killings on the coast.

A particular committee is at present investigating each the preliminary 6 March assault by insurgents, and the violence by pro-government forces that adopted. The BBC understands some 30 individuals have been arrested.

However in a rustic nonetheless ready to see justice for the crimes of the previous, this can be a delicate second.

Some have argued that the federal government’s determination to situation a basic name for help after the rebel assaults made violence predictable, even inevitable.

Many Alawite villagers say they need the federal government’s Common Safety Forces to police their villages, and for different factions, now positioned at some checkpoints and bases, to depart.

Two months after the violence right here, authorities safety forces are appearing because the defend in opposition to their very own hard-line allies.

The way forward for Sanobar is a take a look at for the way forward for Syria, and the nation’s different minorities – Druze, Christians, Kurds – are watching.

To see how far Syria’s Islamist authorities can maintain this wounded nation collectively with out resorting to the repression of the previous.