HTS leader vows to pursue former officials responsible for torture in Syria

DAMASCUS

The leader of Syria's Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group that headed a lightning rebel offensive snatching Damascus from government control, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, address a crowd at the capital's landmark Umayyad Mosque on Dec.8, 2024.

 Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leader said Tuesday that the incoming authorities will announce a list of former senior officials "involved in torturing the Syrian people".

"We will offer rewards to anyone who provides information about senior army and security officers involved in war crimes," HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, now using his real name Ahmed al-Sharaa, said in a statement on Telegram.

The leader on Monday began discussions with the ousted government on transferring power, a day after his opposition alliance dramatically unseated president Bashar al-Assad following decades of brutal rule.

"We will not hesitate to hold accountable the criminals, murderers, security and army officers involved in torturing the Syrian people," Sharaa said in the Tuesday statement, adding they "will pursue war criminals and ask for their hand over from the countries to which they fled".

"We have affirmed our commitment to tolerance for those whose hands are not stained with the blood of the Syrian people, and we have granted amnesty to those who were in compulsory service," he said.

HTS group had been administering swathes of Idlib province and parts of neighbouring areas until Nov. 27, when along with allied factions it launched a lightning offensive, seizing government-held territory and capturing Damascus on Sunday.

Assad fled Syria as the opposition forces swept into the capital, bringing a spectacular end to five decades of brutal rule by his clan.

Swift transition

Jolani met with outgoing prime minister Mohammed al-Jalali "to coordinate a transfer of power that guarantees the provision of services" to Syria's people, said a statement posted on the rebels' Telegram channels.

At the core of the system of rule that Assad inherited from his father Hafez was a brutal complex of prisons and detention centres used to eliminate dissent by those suspected of stepping out of the ruling Baath party's line.

Thousands of Syrians gathered on Monday outside a jail synonymous with the worst atrocities of Assad's rule to search for relatives, many of whom have spent years in the Saydnaya facility outside Damascus, AFP correspondents said.

Rescuers from the Syrian White Helmets group had earlier said they were looking for potential secret doors or basements in Saydnaya.

"I ran like crazy" to get to the prison, said Aida Taha, 65, searching for her brother who was arrested in 2012.

"But I found out that some of the prisoners were still in the basements. There are three or four floors underground."

Crowds of freed prisoners wandered the streets of Damascus distinguishable by the marks of their ordeal: maimed by torture, weakened by illness and emaciated by hunger.

 'Nightmare' 

In central Damascus on Monday, despite all the uncertainty over the future, the joy was palpable.

"It's indescribable. We never thought this nightmare would end. We are reborn," Rim Ramadan, 49, a civil servant at the finance ministry, told AFP.

"We were afraid for 55 years of speaking, even at home. We used to say the walls had ears," Ramadan said, as people honked car horns and rebels fired their guns into the air.

Syria's parliament, formerly pro-Assad like the prime minister, said it supports "the will of the people to build a new Syria towards a better future governed by law and justice".

The Baath party said it will support "a transitional phase in Syria aimed at defending the unity of the country."

Syrian state television's logo on the Telegram messaging app now displays the rebel flag.

During the offensive launched on Nov. 27, rebels met little resistance as they wrested city after city from Assad's control, opening the gates of prisons along the way and freeing thousands, many of them held on political charges.

Some, like Fadwa Mahmoud, whose husband and son are missing, posted calls for help on social media.

"Where are you, Maher and Abdel Aziz? it's time for me to hear your news. Oh God, please come back," wrote Mahmoud, herself a former detainee.

Germany and France said in a statement they were ready to cooperate with Syria's new leadership "on the basis of fundamental human rights and the protection of ethnic and religious minorities."

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, in Saudi Arabia on Monday, said HTS must reject "terrorism and violence" before Britain can engage with the group designated "terrorist" by London.

Washington's top diplomat, Antony Blinken, said the United States  is determined to prevent ISIL re-establishing safe havens there.

"We have a clear interest in doing what we can to avoid the fragmentation of Syria, mass migrations from Syria and, of course, the export of terrorism and extremism," Blinken said.

The United Nations said that whoever ends up in power in Syria must hold the Assad regime to account. But how the ousted leader might face justice remains unclear, especially after the Kremlin refused on Monday to confirm reports by Russian news agencies that he had fled to Moscow.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, however, said that if Russia granted asylum to Assad and his family, this would be a decision taken by President Vladimir Putin.

The Syrian embassy in Moscow raised the opposition's flag, and the Kremlin said it would discuss the status of its bases in Syria with the new authorities.

Russia played an instrumental role in keeping Assad in power, directly intervening in the war starting in 2015 and providing air cover to the army during the rebellion.