Syria has arrested members of the country’s security and military services as part of a probe into sectarian violence in the southern province of Suwayda earlier this year that left hundreds dead.
Judge Hatem Naasan, head of a committee investigating the eruption of violence in Suwayda in July, said that members of security services and the military “who were proven to have committed violations” based on findings and videos posted online had been detained.
“Videos posted on social media clearly showed faces, and they were detained by the authorities concerned,” Naasan said, adding that security personnel were detained by the Interior Ministry while members of the military are being held by the Defence Ministry.
Videos that surfaced online had shown armed men killing Druze civilians kneeling in public squares and shaving the moustaches off elderly men in an act of humiliation.
Naasan did not specify how many arrests were made. Nor did he announce a death toll, saying this would come in the final report that is expected by the end of the year.
He acknowledged that “some foreign fighters randomly and individually entered the city of Suwayda”, saying that some had been detained and questioned. He stated that none of them were members of the Syrian armed or security forces.
Fighting broke out in the Druze-majority province after a Druze truck driver was abducted on a public highway, drawing in Bedouin tribal fighters from other parts of the country.
Government forces were deployed to restore order, but were accused of siding with the Bedouins. Hundreds of civilians, mostly Druze, were killed, many by government fighters.
A ceasefire was established after a week of violence.
Claiming that it was protecting the Druze, Israel also intervened, launching dozens of air attacks on government forces in Suwayda and even striking the Syrian Ministry of Defence headquarters in the centre of the capital Damascus.
Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes around the country since the end of the 54-year al-Assad dynasty in December, mainly targeting, it says, assets of the Syrian army, but also carrying out incursions.
After the acts of violence in July, many in Suwayda now want some form of autonomy in a federal system. A smaller group is calling for total partition.
President Ahmed al-Sharaa has been painstakingly trying to usher Syria back into the international fold, with notable successes. In September, he was the first Syrian leader to address the United Nations General Assembly in six decades, and he was invited to the White House on Monday for a second meeting with United States President Donald Trump.
Al-Sharaa, who wants to unify his war-ravaged nation and end its decades of international isolation, was the first-ever Syrian leader to visit the White House since the country’s independence in 1946.
Both the US and European Union have dropped sanctions against Syria, and major Gulf Arab investment is giving the war-devastated nation a critical economic lifeline.
But al-Sharaa’s quest for national unity after a 14-year ruinous civil war still faces major internal and external challenges ahead.
