Syria’s new government steps up pursuit of Assad loyalists

Syria’s new administration has stepped up its campaign to track down and arrest members of the ousted Assad dictatorship, signaling that it would act with a heavy hand against people it claims are challenging its ability to impose law and order.

Sana, the state-run Syrian news agency, reported Saturday that “a number of remnants of the Assad militias” had been arrested in the coastal Latakia region in western Syria. Weapons and ammunitions were confiscated, the report added.

The new administration, which has tried to assert authority over Syria since an alliance of rebels toppled President Bashar Assad three weeks ago, has indicated that pursuing loyalists of the Assad dictatorship who are undermining its authority is a top priority.

But a human rights organization has raised alarms about the way the transitional government was going after Assad loyalists, saying it was carrying out arbitrary arrests of supporters of the old regime.

Over the past few days, Sana has also reported that government security forces were pursuing members of the Assad regime in the regions of Tartus, Homs and Hama.

On Wednesday, an attempt to arrest Mohammed Kanjou al-Hassan, the former director of military justice under Assad, set off deadly clashes in the Tartus area – part of the heartland of Assad’s Alawite minority. Security forces were ambushed by loyalists of the former government in the area, according to the Britain-based war monitoring group, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Fourteen members of the government forces were killed, according to Mohammed Abdel Rahman, Syria’s interim interior minister.

While some reports have said al-Hassan was later arrested, media officials in Syria’s transitional government had not confirmed that as of Saturday, and his whereabouts remain unclear.

The media office of Syria’s interim Interior Ministry said security forces were pursuing members of the Assad regime “to secure” the country’s territory, suggesting they were undermining the security situation. It said the campaign was launched only after loyalists of the former government had failed “to hand over their weapons and settle their affairs” within a specific time frame.

On Saturday, Lebanese authorities repatriated 70 Syrian officers and soldiers who served in Assad’s military after they illegally entered Lebanon on Friday, according to the Syrian Observatory.

An official in the new Syrian administration confirmed Lebanon returned military personnel from the ousted regime to Syria, without specifying a number.

Former Syrian officials and military personnel have fled Syria for neighboring Lebanon and Iraq in hopes of avoiding arrest or retribution.

Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory, said he was receiving reports from his group’s activists in Syria that government security forces were carrying out random arrests of supporters of Assad’s regime, while largely failing to take action against top military leaders.

“We need transitional justice, not revenge justice,” he said in a phone interview Saturday. “The new Syria should be a state of justice, democracy, equality and law.”

The media office for the Interior Ministry pushed back against Abdulrahman’s comments, asserting that security forces had not arrested supporters of Assad’s regime but rather armed loyalists of the old government who carried out attacks against the new administration, and their accomplices.

The new authorities, Abdulrahman said, should publish a list of all the people suspected of perpetrating war crimes against Syrians and work with families in towns and villages to arrest them. He said they should then be given a fair trial.

The new government is led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamic group that ruled over parts of northwestern Syria before Assad’s fall.

Ahmad al-Sharaa, the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, has sought to reassure Syria’s minorities including Alawites, Christians and Druze. But some members of those communities have expressed fears that they could be persecuted.

Syria’s new leaders, Abdulrahman said, were holding a unique opportunity to build a state that serves Syrians.

“We want the people of Syria to have a new image of Syria,” he said. “We don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the criminal Bashar al-Assad’s regime.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.