HARBANUSH, Syria: Ahmed Al-Hakim’s 27-year-old brother was tortured to death in prison in Syria’s militant-run northwest, sparking rare protests amid accusations from residents and activists of 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 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 militants 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 Britain-based 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.
HTS’s media office told AFP the group was “seriously examining” the protesters’ demands and would “tighten security bodies’ work (and) improve prison infrastructure... to deal with any dysfunction.”
Hakim, an accountant originally from Aleppo province, said his brother participated in anti-government protests before becoming a fighter and was part of the small HTS-aligned Jaish Al-Ahrar group.
He said the faction told Abdel-Kader to report to HTS, considered a terrorist organization by several Western countries, on suspicions of collaborating with the government.
Abdel-Kader handed himself in on March 16 last year “on the understanding that he would be out... in a week at most,” Hakim said.
After detaining him for several months and then saying he was “in good health,” HTS stonewalled the family’s requests for information, according to Hakim.
Months later, a factional contact and a former fighter told the family Abdel-Kader had died due to torture.
Jaish Al-Ahrar only notified them formally on February 22 that Abdel-Kader was dead.
The family found his grave was “new but the date of death written on it was around 20 days after his arrest,” a distraught Hakim said.
Former detainees told Hakim his brother was “beaten with piping until he lost consciousness, and tied up by his hands for days without food or water.”
Abdel-Kader denied any wrongdoing “so they increased the torture until they killed him,” they told Hakim.
One former detainee said Abdel-Kader was tortured so severely that “he couldn’t walk because his feet were swollen and filled with pus.”
The day he died, the guards “tortured him for six hours” and after he was returned to the cell he “kept vomiting,” Hakim was told.
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.
But it made no difference for Noha Al-Atrash, 30, whose husband Ahmed Majluba has been detained since December 2022, accused alternately of theft and belonging to an extremist group.
“He has been arrested five times... there is no proven reason for his detention,” she said from her home in Idlib city as her two young children held photos of their father, 38.
Majluba, a laborer, was shot in the leg “during a previous period” in HTS detention, Atrash said.
“I go to the protests, I make posters with pictures of my husband on them, and I take the kids,” said Atrash who was covered head-to-toe in a niqab.
She and her children were themselves detained for around 20 days after she hounded authorities for information.
During one prison visit, she saw her husband’s hand was broken and “his face was swollen from beatings,” she said.
“They’ve asked us to pay $3,000 to have him released,” Atrash said, but added that she doesn’t have the money.
“I have no choice but to protest... I won’t give up as long as they have my husband,” she said defiantly.
The UN’s independent commission of inquiry on Syria said recently it had “reasonable grounds to believe” HTS members had committed “acts that may amount to the war crimes of torture and cruel treatment and unlawful deprivation of liberty.”
Bassam Alahmad from the Paris-based Syrians for Truth and Justice said people were “fed up with HTS violations” such as “arbitrary arrests and torture.”
He urged families and rights groups to gather independent, credible evidence for potential future investigations.
In a camp near the Turkish border, Amina Al-Hamam, 70, said her son Ghazwan Hassun was detained by HTS in 2019 on suspicion of “informing for the regime.”
“Some people tell us he’s dead, others say he’s alive,” the distressed elderly woman said, sitting with her son’s children, aged five and nine.
Days before being detained, Hassun, a defector from the Syrian police, had published a video criticizing HTS, his family said.
During Hamam’s only visit — eight months after he was detained — Hassun told her guards used a torture method notorious across Syria where the victim has their hands tied behind their back and is suspended from them for hours.
The family has heard nothing since about the 39-year-old but has vowed to keep fighting.
“I cry for him night and day,” said Hamam.
“We fled from injustice, but here we have seen worse.”
Syrians missing, dying from torture in militant-run prisons
https://arab.news/cpzs8
Syrians missing, dying from torture in militant-run prisons
- “We protested and rose up against the Assad regime in order to be rid of injustice,” said Hakim, 30, referring to Syrian President Bashar Assad
- 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
South Sudan overwhelmed by refugee influx: MSF
The medical charity said up to 5,000 people were crossing the border every day. The United Nations recently put it even higher at 7-10,000 daily.
Sudan is suffering one of the world’s worst humanitarian emergencies since conflict broke out in April 2023 between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, with tens of thousands killed and millions displaced.
An MSF emergency coordinator in Renk town, near a transit center holding some 17,000 people according to the UN, said they were working with the International Committee of the Red Cross to provide care.
“But the situation is completely overwhelming and it’s not enough,” said Emanuele Montobbio.
Facilities had been expanded to accommodate the arrival of war wounded, he said, but they were unable to treat everyone.
“Over 100 wounded patients, many with serious injuries, still await surgery,” Montobbio said.
Bashir Ismail, from Mosmon in Blue Nile state, was recovering in hospital in Renk after an air raid.
“Something hit me in the chest — it was the most painful experience of my life,” he said.
“I was so disoriented that it felt like I had lost my memory.”
MSF South Sudan’s deputy medical coordinator Roselyn Morales said thousands who had crossed faced “critical shortages of food and shelter, clean water, shelter and health care.”
South Sudan is ill-equipped to handle the arrival of thousands seeking shelter from war, with the young country itself battling violence, endemic poverty and natural disasters.
Alhida Hammed fled to Renk after his village was attacked and he was shot in Sudan’s Blue Nile state.
“The houses were blazing, and everyone was running in different directions,” he said.
He now has no shelter and is living under a tree, but does not want to return to Sudan.
“Home is no longer a home — it is filled with bad memories.”
Jordan foreign minister to hold talks with Syria’s new leader
- Safadi would meet with the new Syrian leader on Monday as well as with several Syrian officials
Amman:Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi was due in Damascus on Monday to meet with Syria’s new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa, Amman said, the latest high-profile visit since Bashar Assad’s ouster.
Jordan, which borders Syria to the south, hosted a summit earlier this month where top Arab, Turkish, EU and US diplomats called for an inclusive and peaceful transition after years of civil war.
Sharaa, whose Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) spearheaded the offensive that toppled Assad on December 8, has welcomed senior officials from a host of countries in the Middle East and beyond in recent days.
The Jordanian foreign ministry said in a statement that Safadi would meet with the new Syrian leader on Monday as well as with “several Syrian officials.”
This is the first visit by a senior Jordanian official since Assad’s fall.
Government spokesman Mohamed Momani told reporters on Sunday that Jordan “sides with the will of the brotherly Syrian people,” stressing the close ties between the two nations.
Momani said the kingdom would like to see security and stability restored in Syria, and supported “the unity of its territories.”
Stability in war-torn Syria was in Jordan’s interests, Momani said, and would “ensure security on its borders.”
Some Syrians who had fled the war since 2011 and sought refuge in Jordan have begun returning home, according to Jordanian authorities.
The interior ministry said Thursday that more than 7,000 Syrians had left, out of some 1.3 million refugees Amman says it has hosted.
According to the United Nations, 680,000 Syrian refugees were registered with it in Jordan.
Bethlehem plans another somber Christmas under the shadow of war in Gaza
- Manger Square is empty of tourists and many businesses aren’t sure how much longer they can hold on
- The city’s hotel occupancy rate plunged from around 80 percent in early 2023 to around 3 percent today
BETHLEHEM: The Nativity Store in Manger Square has sold handmade olive wood carvings and religious items to people visiting the traditional birthplace of Jesus since 1927. But as Bethlehem prepares to mark its second Christmas under the shadow of the war in Gaza, there are almost no tourists, leaving the Nativity Store and other businesses unsure of how much longer they can hold on.
For the second straight year, Bethlehem’s Christmas celebrations will be somber and muted, in deference to ongoing war in Gaza. There will be no giant Christmas tree in Manger Square, no raucous scout marching bands, no public lights twinkling and very few public decorations or displays.
“Last year before Christmas, we had more hope, but now again we are close to Christmas and we don’t have anything,” said Rony Tabash, the third-generation owner of Nativity Store.
Israel’s war against Hamas has been raging for nearly 15 months, and there still is no end in sight. Repeated ceasefire efforts have stalled.
Since the war began, tourism to Israel and the Israeli-occupied West Bank has plummeted. And after Israel barred entry to most of the 150,000 Palestinians in the West Bank who had jobs in Israel, the Palestinian economy contracted by 25 percent in the past year.
The yearly Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem — shared among Armenian, Catholic and Orthodox denominations — are usually major boons for the city, where tourism accounts for 70 percent of its yearly income. But the streets are empty this season.
Tabash said he continues to open the store every day, but often an entire week will go by without a sale. Tabash works with more than 25 local families who create hand-carved religious items out of the region’s storied olive wood. But with no buyers, work has dried up for these families.
Lots of room at the inn
The number of visitors to the city plunged from a pre-COVID high of around 2 million visitors per year in 2019 to fewer than 100,000 visitors in 2024, said Jiries Qumsiyeh, the spokesperson for the Palestinian tourism ministry.
According to the Christmas story, Mary was forced to give birth to Jesus in a stable because there was no room at the inn. Today, nearly all of Bethlehem’s 5,500 hotel rooms are empty.
The city’s hotel occupancy rate plunged from around 80 percent in early 2023 to around 3 percent today, said Elias Al Arja, the head of Bethlehem Hoteliers Association. At his own hotel, the Bethlehem Hotel, he said he has laid off a staff of more than 120 people and retains just five employees.
The city hosts more than 100 stores and 450 workshops dealing with traditional Palestinian handicraft, Qumsiyeh said. But just a week before Christmas, when the city should be bursting with visitors, Manger Square was mostly empty save for a few locals selling coffee and tea. Only two of the eight stores in the main drag of the square were open for business.
Qumsiyeh worries that when the war ends and tourism eventually rebounds, many of the families that have handed down traditional skills for generations will no longer be making the items that reflect Palestinian heritage and culture.
Many are leaving the region entirely. “We have witnessed a very high rate of emigration since the beginning of the aggression, especially among those working in the tourism sector,” said Qumsiyeh.
A Christmas without joy
Almost 500 families have left Bethlehem in the past year, said Mayor Anton Salman. And those are just the families who moved abroad with official residency visas. Many others have moved abroad on temporary tourist visas and are working illegally, and it’s unclear if they will return, Salman said.
Around half of the population in the Bethlehem area, including nearby villages, works in either tourism or in jobs in Israel.
The unemployment rate in Bethlehem is roughly 50 percent, said Salman. Unemployment across the West Bank is around 30 percent, according to the Palestinian Economy Ministry.
Canceling Christmas festivities is one way to draw attention to the difficult situation in Bethlehem and across the Palestinian territories, said Salman. “This year we want to show the world that the Palestinian people are still suffering and they haven’t the joy that everybody else in the world having,” said Salman.
It is another blow to the Holy Land’s dwindling population over the decade due to emigration and a low birthrate.
Christians are a small percentage of the population. There are about 182,000 in Israel, 50,000 in the West Bank and Jerusalem and 1,300 in Gaza, according to the US State Department.
Finding the light in the night
Father Issa Thaljieh, the parish priest of the Greek Orthodox Church in the Church of the Nativity, said many families are struggling financially, leaving them unable to pay rent or school fees, much less buy Christmas presents or celebrate the holiday in other ways. The church’s social services have tried to help, but the needs are great, he said.
Thaljieh said his Christmas message this year focused on encouraging Palestinians in Bethlehem to stay despite the challenges.
“A church without Christians is not a church,” he said, as workers hand-polished the ornate brass candelabras in the cavernous, empty church a week before the holiday.
“The light that was born when Jesus Christ was born here is the light that moves beyond darkness, so we have to wait, we have to be patient, we have to pray a lot, and we have to stay with our roots because our roots are in Bethlehem,” he said.
Some families are finding ways to bring back pockets of joy.
Bethlehem resident Nihal Bandak, 39, gave into her three children’s requests to have a Christmas tree this year, after not having one last year. Decorating the tree is the favorite part of Christmas of her youngest daughter, 8-year-old Stephanie.
Mathew Bandak, 11 was thrilled his family brought back some of their traditions, but also torn.
“I was happy because we get to decorate and celebrate, but people are in Gaza who don’t have anything to celebrate,” he said.
Rony Tabash, the third-generation owner of Nativity Store, said he will continue to open the store, because it’s part of his family’s history.
“We are not feeling Christmas, but in the end, Christmas is in our hearts,” he said, adding that the entire city was praying for a ceasefire and peace. “We have a big faith that always, when we see Christmas, it will give us the light in the night.”
Former Israeli spy agents describe attack using exploding electronic devices against Hezbollah
- Operation started 10 years ago using walkie-talkies laden with hidden explosives, which Hezbollah did not realize it was buying from Israel
- It took two weeks to convince Hezbollah to switch to the heftier pager, in part by using false ads on YouTube promoting the devices
WASHINGTON: Two recently retired senior Israeli intelligence agents shared new details about a deadly clandestine operation years in the making that targeted Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and Syria using exploding pagers and walkie talkies three months ago.
Hezbollah began striking Israel almost immediately after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack that sparked the Israel-Hamas war.
The agents spoke with CBS “60 Minutes” in a segment aired Sunday night. They wore masks and spoke with altered voices to hide their identities.
One agent said the operation started 10 years ago using walkie-talkies laden with hidden explosives, which Hezbollah didn’t realize it was buying from Israel, its enemy. The walkie-talkies were not detonated until September, a day after booby-trapped pagers were set off.
“We created a pretend world,” said the officer, who went by the name “Michael.”
Phase two of the plan, using the booby-trapped pagers, kicked in in 2022 after Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency learned Hezbollah had been buying pagers from a Taiwan-based company, the second officer said.
The pagers had to be made slightly larger to accommodate the explosives hidden inside. They were tested on dummies multiple times to find the right amount of explosive that would hurt only the Hezbollah fighter and not anyone else in close proximity.
Mossad also tested numerous ring tones to find one that sounded urgent enough to make someone pull the pager out of their pocket.
The second agent, who went by the name “Gabriel,” said it took two weeks to convince Hezbollah to switch to the heftier pager, in part by using false ads on YouTube promoting the devices as dustproof, waterproof, providing a long battery life and more.
He described the use of shell companies, including one based in Hungary, to dupe the Taiwanese firm, Gold Apollo, into unknowingly partnering with the Mossad.
Hezbollah also was unaware it was working with Israel.
Gabriel compared the ruse to a 1998 psychological film about a man who has no clue that he is living in a false world and his family and friends are actors paid to keep up the illusion.
“When they are buying from us, they have zero clue that they are buying from the Mossad,” Gabriel said. “We make like ‘Truman Show,’ everything is controlled by us behind the scene. In their experience, everything is normal. Everything was 100 percent kosher including businessman, marketing, engineers, showroom, everything.”
By September, Hezbollah militants had 5,000 pagers in their pockets.
Israel triggered the attack on Sept. 17, when pagers all over Lebanon started beeping. The devices would explode even if the person failed to push the buttons to read an incoming encrypted message.
The next day, Mossad activated the walkie-talkies, some of which exploded at funerals for some of the approximately 30 people who were killed in the pager attacks.
Gabriel said the goal was more about sending a message than actually killing Hezbollah fighters.
“If he just dead, so he’s dead. But if he’s wounded, you have to take him to the hospital, take care of him. You need to invest money and efforts,” he said. “And those people without hands and eyes are living proof, walking in Lebanon, of ‘don’t mess with us.’ They are walking proof of our superiority all around the Middle East.”
In the days after the attack, Israel’s air force hit targets across Lebanon, killing thousands. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was assassinated when Israel dropped bombs on his bunker.
By November, the war between Israel and Hezbollah, a byproduct of the deadly attack by Hamas militants in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, ended with a ceasefire. More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas militants, health officials have said.
The agent using the name “Michael” said that the day after the pager explosions, people in Lebanon were afraid to turn on their air conditioners out of fear that they would explode, too.
“There is real fear,” he said.
Asked if that was intentional, he said, “We want them to feel vulnerable, which they are. We can’t use the pagers again because we already did that. We’ve already moved on to the next thing. And they’ll have to keep on trying to guess what the next thing is.”
Gaza rescuers say Israeli strikes kill 35
- Hossam Abu Safia, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, said in a statement that the facility’s generators were hit and that “the army is attempting to target the fuel tank, which is full of fuel and poses a significant fire risk”
- Bassal said eight people including four children were killed in the attack on the school, which had been repurposed as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the war
GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defense agency said on Sunday that Israeli strikes killed at least 35 Palestinians across the territory, more than 14 months into the Israel-Hamas war.
The violence came even as Palestinian groups involved in the fighting said a ceasefire deal was “closer than ever.”
Israel has faced growing criticism of its actions during the war, triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, including from rights groups accusing it of “acts of genocide” which the Israeli government strongly denies.
Pope Francis denounced on Sunday the “cruelty” of Israel’s bombardment, highlighting the deaths of children and attacks on schools and hospitals in Gaza.
It was his second such comment in as many days, despite Israel’s accusing the pontiff of “double standards.”
On the ground in Gaza, civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said at least 13 people were killed in an air strike on a house in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah belonging to the Abu Samra family.
An AFP photographer saw residents searching through the debris for survivors, while others looked for belongings they could salvage.
In a nearby compound, bodies covered in blankets lay on the sandy ground.
The military said it targeted an Islamic Jihad militant who was operating in Deir el-Balah.
“According to an initial examination, the reported number of casualties resulting from the strike does not align with the information held by the IDF (military),” it said to AFP in a statement, which did not give its own toll.
“We are... losing loved ones every day,” said Deir el-Balah resident Naim Al-Ramlawi.
“I pray to God that a truce will be reached soon” and would allow Gazans to finally “live a decent life, instead of this miserable life,” he said.
The military also confirmed a separate strike further north, on a school in Gaza City.
Bassal said eight people including four children were killed in the attack on the school, which had been repurposed as a shelter for Palestinians displaced by the war.
It was the latest of numerous similar strikes against schools-turned-shelters during the war.
The military says the facilities are used by Hamas Palestinian militants.
In this case it said it carried out a “precise strike” that targeted a Hamas “command and control center” inside the school compound.
AFP images showed mangled concrete slabs and iron beams strewn amid patches of blood at the damaged school building.
Bassal said in a statement that a separate strike, overnight into Sunday, killed three people in Rafah, in the south.
And a drone strike on Sunday morning hit a car in Gaza City, killing four people, the spokesman added.
Late on Sunday, the civil defense agency said seven people were killed when Israeli drones struck tents in the humanitarian area of Al-Mawasi in western Khan Yunis, while the Israeli military said it had targeted a “Hamas terrorist.”
Israel in early October began a major military operation in Gaza’s north, which it said aimed to prevent Hamas from regrouping there.
A United Nations official who visited Gaza City said late last month that people were living in “inhumane conditions with severe food shortages and terrible sanitary conditions.”
On Sunday a hospital director in northern Gaza said Israeli forces were bombing buildings near the facility.
Hossam Abu Safia, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, said in a statement that the facility’s generators were hit and that “the army is attempting to target the fuel tank, which is full of fuel and poses a significant fire risk.”
Contacted by AFP, the military said it was unaware of any strikes on the hospital, one of only two still operating in northern Gaza.
The unprecedented Hamas attack last year that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also took 251 hostages, of whom 96 remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed at least 45,259 people, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.
Hamas and two other Palestinian armed groups said in a rare joint statement on Saturday that an agreement to end the bloodshed was “closer than ever,” after Qatari-hosted talks that followed months of stalled negotiations.
