DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syrian security and military personnel have been detained as part of an investigation into sectarian violence in the southern province of Suwayda in July that killed hundreds of people, investigators said Sunday.
The head of the Syrian committee investigating the violence in Suwayda held a news conference in the capital Damascus to highlight progress but did not give a death toll, saying it would be included in the final report expected by the end of the year.
In mid-July, armed groups associated with Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri clashed with local Bedouin clans, prompting the intervention of government forces, who effectively sided with the Bedouins. Hundreds of civilians, mostly Druze, were killed, many by government fighters.
Judge Hatem Naasan, head of the investigative committee, said they had listened to people affected by the violence, including “witnesses and victims.”
“We have achieved positive results,” Naasan told reporters in Damascus, adding that security and military personnel “who were proven to have committed crimes based on the committee's investigations and videos posted on social media” had been detained. He did not specify how many of them were detained, adding that after interrogation they were handed over to the judicial authorities.
“The videos posted on social media show their faces clearly and they have been detained by the authorities concerned,” Naasan said. According to him, law enforcement officers were detained by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and military personnel were detained by the Ministry of Defense.
Videos have appeared online of armed men killing Druze civilians, kneeling in public squares and shaving the mustaches of elderly men as a sign of humiliation.
Naasan played down suggestions that foreign fighters were involved in the violence in Suwayda. He said some foreign fighters were detained and questioned, adding that they acted on their own when they entered the city and none of them were members of the Syrian military or security forces.
“It became clear to us that some foreign fighters randomly and individually entered the city of Suwayda,” Naasan said.
Following the July violence, many in Sweida now want some form of autonomy within the federal system. A smaller group calls for complete partition.
Most of the world's estimated 1 million Druze live in Syria, with the rest in Lebanon, Israel and the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967 and later annexed.
