BALADI NEWS
The Assad regime forces transferred 15 prisoners from the Military Investigation Branch 248 to the military court in al-Mezzeh in Damascus, and sentenced them to death on July 25, without specifying when the sentences would be carried out, a military source told Al-Modon newspaper.
The sentenced men were then transferred to the Sednaya Military Prison, the newspaper said.
Hezbollah had arrested them and held them in their prisons for three years, before handing them over to the Air Force Intelligence directorate a year ago, the source added. The prisoners spent a full year in detention, moving between the Palestine Branch 235 and the Military Investigation Branch 248, according to the newspaper.
Captain Mohamed Nassif was among those sentenced to death. Regime forces had released one of Nassif’s companions in 2018 as part of a prisoner exchange with Hayaat Tahrir al-Sham, coinciding with the evacuation of the towns of Kafraya and al-Foua, the newspaper pointed out.
However, the Air Force Intelligence had re-arrested them while transferring them from Idlib to the Damascus countryside, with mediation from the Fourth Division, and then transferred them to the Palestine Branch.
A source in eastern Qalamoun told Al-Modon that families of one of the prisoners in Sednaya—a defected soldier—had received from the civil registry department in the town of al-Qutayfah in eastern Qalamoun a notification of the death of their son in the prison without clarifying the cause of death or handing over his body. The prisoner’s family tried to pay money through intermediaries to secure the hand over a body, but the regime refused, and then instructed them to hold a limited funeral for him.
Al-Modon’s source added that dozens of defectors from eastern Qalamoun who had carried out settlements with regime forces had been arrested in recent months and transferred to Saydnaya after being investigated by Branch 248.
Regime forces have forbidden visits to these prisons except through “intermediaries,” with their families paying huge sums to secure visits behind windows which only last minutes every three months. Families of the prisoners fear they could be executed as the Russian “guarantor” neglects its responsibilities.
Family of defectors in prison visited Russian officers in the headquarters of the Third Division more than once, and asked them to secure the release of their children from Saydnaya and to implement what had been agreed upon after the opposition left—but to no avail.
Source: The Syrian Observer.