Ahmed al-Hakim’s 27-year-old brother was tortured to death in a Syrian prison in the jihadist-controlled northwest, igniting rare protests as residents and activists allege widespread rights violations in the opposition bastion.
“We protested and rose up against the Assad regime in order to be rid of injustice,” said Hakim, 30, referring to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Now “we find ourselves ruled with the same methods,” he told AFP, crouched near his brother Abdel-Kader’s grave, flowers and plants placed in the freshly turned soil.
Syria’s 13-year-old conflict, sparked by Assad’s brutal repression of anti-government protests, has drawn in foreign armies and jihadists and killed more than 500,000 people.
Around half of Idlib province and parts of neighboring Aleppo, Hama and Latakia provinces are controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an alliance of Islamist factions led by Syria’s former Al-Qaeda affiliate.
Accusations of torture and other rights violations have increased since last year when HTS launched a crackdown on suspected “agents” for Damascus or foreign governments.
Security forces from the Islamist group have detained hundreds of civilians, fighters and even prominent HTS members, providing no information to families, said residents and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.
Abdel-Kader’s death triggered rare protests in Idlib province, home to some three million people, many displaced from government-held areas, in recent weeks and calls for the release of detainees, according to the Observatory.
The war monitor said demonstrations are taking place daily in towns and villages, most recently on Sunday evening, when protesters chanted slogans against HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani.
Jolani has said the protesters’ demands were “mostly justified”, and announced changes including the restructuring of the security force running the prisons.
The grim treatment echoes torture that rights groups have reported in Syrian government-run prisons, particularly since 2011, with tens of thousands of people forcibly disappeared and arbitrarily detained.
Amnesty International in 2017 accused authorities of committing secret mass hangings in the notorious Saydnaya facility.
The Observatory said HTS this month released 420 prisoners in an amnesty aimed at quelling the discontent in the northwest.
