December 9, 2024: Syria civil war news

Our live coverage of the Syrian revolution has moved here.

Abandoned tanks are seen at Mezzeh Air Base after Syrian government forces deserted their posts in Damascus on December 8.

Two former high-ranking Syrian intelligence officials have been charged with war crimes for allegedly torturing Americans and other civilians who were deemed enemies by the Syrian government and held in a military prison, the Department of Justice said Monday.

US prosecutors say the two officials in former President Bashar al-Assad’s regime oversaw operations of the detention facilities at the Mezzeh Military Airport near Damascus, where detainees were beaten, electrocuted, hung by their wrists, burned with acid and had their toenails removed. The alleged crimes occurred during the civil war that wracked the country for over a decade and culminated in the extraordinary fall of the Assad regime over the weekend.

Former Syrian air force intelligence officers Jamil Hassan, 72, and Abdul Salam Mahmoud, 65, “created an atmosphere of terror at Mezzeh Prison,” prosecutors said. They were charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes through cruel and inhuman treatment, according to an unsealed indictment filed in federal court in Chicago. Warrants for their arrests have been issued, and they remain at large, the Justice Department said.

Read more about the charges.

A list of senior Assad regime officials wanted for torture will soon be announced, Syria’s rebels said.

For half a century, the Assad family ruled over the country with an iron fist, with long-documented reports of mass incarceration, torture, extra-judicial killings and atrocities against their own people.

The rebels will “announce List no. 1 that includes names of the most senior officials involved in torturing the Syrian people,” according to a statement from Military Operations Command, the rebel coalition led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

The statement said rewards would be offered for information about senior army and security officers involved in alleged war crimes.

Sharaa also reiterated that a general amnesty for conscripted soldiers in the Syrian military remains in force. The rebels earlier urged the Assad regime’s security forces to register with what they are calling “a settlement center.” Amnesty does not apply to officers and soldiers who volunteered to serve.

There was a warm welcome for Suheil Hamawi in the northern Lebanese village of Chekka after he spent more than three decades in Syria’s notorious prisons.

Syrian rebels seized Damascus on Sunday, ousting former President Bashar al-Assad and releasing thousands of prisoners from the dictator’s jails, including 61-year-old Suheil.

Suheil’s twin Nicolas Hamawi called his brother “more than a hero” and said reuniting with him was like being “born again.”

“Thirty-three years went by in vain,” Nicolas said. “We were reborn, like twins, truly twins in every sense of the word.”

However, returning home made the former prisoner realize how many years he had missed out on.

“I have grandchildren, but I never felt my age until my son’s daughter called me ‘Grandpa,’” Suheil Hamawi said. “That’s when I realized I had lost such a long period of time.”

Video Ad Feedback

Clarissa Ward goes inside Syria’s infamous ‘slaughterhouse’ prison

03:46 • Source: CNN

Clarissa Ward goes inside Syria’s infamous ‘slaughterhouse’ prison

03:46

The line of traffic to reach Saydnaya prison north of Damascus stretched miles, as people from across the country poured in to try to find their loved ones. Many left their cars to walk the last stretch, pushing up the hill toward a facility that has become synonymous with arbitrary detention, torture and murder.

They were spurred on by rumors that an underground area of the prison, known as the red section, was still full of thousands imprisoned by the Assad regime.

One person, Maysoon Labut, came from the southern city of Dara’a, looking for her three brothers and son in law. She was breathless and emotional as she conveyed the urgency of the situation.

Cries of “Allahu Akbar” and bursts of machine gun fire rang through the air. The crowd surged toward the prison. Had an entrance to red section been found? A man and woman ran to keep up. “Ya rab, ya rab” (My God, my God) the woman repeated over and over.

Inside the prison, workers from the White Helmets volunteer organization frantically drilled and hammered through concrete to find an entrance to the red area. A sniffer dog lent support. But no entrance was found. In a statement, the organization said it found “no evidence of undiscovered secret cells or basements.”

In another part, family members walked around, sifting through the vast trove of documents the fleeing regime left behind, searching for clues as to the fate of their loved ones.

Tens of thousands of Syrians were forcibly disappeared in Saydnaya, lost in the abyss of a prison that was known as “the slaughterhouse.” It has come to symbolize industrial-scale arbitrary detention and torture – all to keep one man in power.

A woman held up a photo of her brother, taken 12 years ago, is fate unknown. He would be 42 by now, she says.“ He has two girls and a son he has never met. We just want to be sure if he’s dead or alive. God knows.”

One of the groups representing families of prisoners missing at Saydnaya said that the rumors of thousands still trapped in its bowels may be just that – rumors. And that raised another grim possibility: that many more were executed here than even was previously thought, disposed of without their relatives being told.

The search for possible prisoners in secret cells in Syria’s notorious Saydnaya prison has ended, according to the Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, who added there was “no evidence of undiscovered secret cells or basements.”

“The search did not uncover any unopened or hidden areas within the facility,” the group said in a statement Monday.

The group had deployed specialized teams to look for secret cells or hidden basements that might be holding additional prisoners as speculation mounted about more detainees being held in deeper levels of the prison, dubbed the “human slaughterhouse” by Amnesty International.

The volunteer group said it shared the “profound disappointment” of the families of those who remain missing and urged people on social media to avoid the spread of the “widespread misinformation and rumors circulating about prisons and detainees.”

As rebel forces released prisoners from Saydnaya over the weekend, Syrians took to social media for news of missing or detained loved ones – some families even gathering outside the prison in hope.

Syrian rebels are calling on the Assad regime’s security forces to register with what they are calling “a settlement center.”

Military Operations Command, the rebel coalition consisting of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), announced the opening of a “settlement center for members of the criminal regime in Homs.”

Former regime members are required to bring all documents, regime-issued equipment and official belongings or they will be subject to prosecution if they provide false or incomplete information.

Earlier on Monday, the rebels issued a general amnesty for conscripted soldiers in the Syrian military, saying, “they are granted safety for their lives, and any harm against them is strictly prohibited.” Amnesty does not apply to officers and soldiers who volunteered to serve.

The armed rebel alliance charged across Syria over 11 days, sweeping through major cities in a lightning-fast offensive before taking control of the capital, Damascus, over the weekend.

US President Joe Biden spoke Monday with Jordan’s King Abdullah II emphasizing the country’s key role in “maintaining stability and de-escalating tensions” in the Middle East following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.

That resolution, passed in 2015, endorses a roadmap for a peace process in Syria through UN-facilitated talks between the Syrian government and opposition members.

Biden, “also discussed the situation in eastern Syria to include the U.S. commitment the D-ISIS mission, including the strikes conducted last night against a concentration of ISIS fighters and leaders,” the White House said. “The President emphasized the support of the United States for the stability of Jordan and Jordan’s central role in maintaining stability and de-escalating tensions throughout the Middle East region.”

The two leaders additionally talked about the “urgent need to conclude the ceasefire and hostage release agreement together with a surge in humanitarian assistance for the people of Gaza” and agreed to remain in “regular contact directly and through their teams.”

Israeli soldiers stand near tanks near the border with Syria on the Israeli side in the Golan Heights on Monday.

The United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) told Israel that its presence in the Syrian buffer zone would violate the 1974 Agreement on Disengagement with Syria, the UN Secretary General’s spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said Monday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said that he had ordered the military to “take control” of the buffer zone, which separates the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from the rest of Syria.

The UN has confirmed that Israeli troops entered the buffer zone and were moving within that area, where they remain in at least three locations, according to Dujarric.

“There should be no military forces or activities in the area of separation,” he said.

Dujarric also said UNDOF personnel, who are tasked with maintaining a ceasefire between Israel and Syria and supervising the areas of separation and limitation, remain at their positions and are carrying out their mandated activities.

“Currently, the situation in the UNDOF area of operations is relatively calm,” he said.

The United States has “taken steps to secure our embassy” facility in Syria following the collapse of the Assad government, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Monday.

The US suspended operations at its embassy in Damascus in February 2012 and did not have diplomatic relations with the Assad government. Czech Republic had served as the US protecting power in Syria, but Miller noted that it had left the embassy in the Syrian capital.

Miller said there were no US personnel there, but the US is “at times able to engage with local parties to maintain the security of our embassy, make sure that is not breached, and we have taken those steps.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria has opened a new chapter in the Middle East and vowed Israel would continue working to change the face of the region.

At a news conference on Monday, Netanyahu insisted that the regime’s collapse was a direct result of the blows Israel has dealt on Hezbollah and Iran, which supported the Assad government.

He said the elimination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was crucial to weakening Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance, comprising allied states and militias. Although the axis hasn’t been defeated, Netanyahu declared that Israel is changing the face of the Middle East.

“Those who cooperate with us, gain. Those who are against us, lose,” he said.

Netanyahu also said Israel would continue to ensure its security by maintaining its presence in the occupied Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in 1967.

“The Golan Heights will forever be part of the Israeli state,” he said.

Netanyahu on Sunday said that he had ordered the military to “take control” of the buffer zone that separates the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from the rest of Syria.

Defense Minister Israel Katz’s office on Monday confirmed Israel’s capture of the Syrian side of the strategic high point of Mt. Hermon, which sits on the border between Syria, Lebanon and the Golan Heights. It also called for the completion of an Israeli takeover of the buffer zone in the Golan Heights, and the creation of a “security zone” in Syrian territory beyond it “free of heavy strategic weapons and terrorist infrastructures.”

People welcome the leader of Syria's Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group that headed a lightning rebel offensive snatching Damascus from government control in Damascus on Sunday.

The United States is not currently reviewing the terrorist designation of the leading Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), but could still change it in the future, according to a State Department spokesperson.

“We are always reviewing our sanctions posture with entities based on their actions, so when entities take different actions, of course, there could be a change in in our sanctions posture,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a briefing.

Miller noted that such designations, like all US sanctions, “are designed to be an incentive to different courses of actions.”

Miller said that despite the terrorist designation, the US has the ability to communicated with HTS and wants to “have conversations with the key groups inside Syria, either directly or indirectly,” including HTS, but declined to say whether the US intended to reach out directly to HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani.

HTS and Jolani came out of the terrorist group al Qaeda, but have attempted to distance themselves from their terrorist roots.

The fall of the Assad regime in Syria is a “big loss” for Iran’s role in the region, according to Vali Nasr, professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

“Iran put a great deal of blood and treasure into preventing Assad from falling during the Arab Spring (…) The loss of Assad means a great deal in terms of having all of that investment come to naught,” the professor told CNN.

The power vacuum left by Iran, now filled by an “Islamist force,” poses a threat to the United States and Israel’s interests in the region, he added.

Turkey is appearing victorious as the main power broker in Syria, stepping in to fill the power vacuum left by Iran and Russia, whose roles in the country are “eliminated for now,” he added.

Freelance journalist Austin Tice went missing in Syria in 2014 and has not been heard from since.

The top US hostage envoy Roger Carstens is in Beirut as part of the “intensive efforts” to find freelance journalist Austin Tice, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday.

The Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs’ travels to the Lebanese capital comes as US officials have intensified efforts to find the detained journalist following the collapse of the Assad government.

“We encourage anyone who has information about Austin’s whereabouts to contact the FBI immediately,” Miller said at a briefing, noting that there is a reward.

CNN reported this weekend that US officials have reached out to Syrian opposition forces about Tice, hoping to learn more about his whereabouts. He was detained at a checkpoint in Damascus in August 2012. The government of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad did not publicly acknowledged detaining Tice.

The fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria illustrates a weakened Russia and Iran, the White House said on Monday, with both countries “no longer able to provide the support that the regime needed in order to survive.”

The Assad regime, he said, had “effectively become a Russian-Iranian joint venture inside Syria, and both of those joint venture partners were no longer able to provide the support that the regime needed in order to survive, and that’s a big part of why it’s no longer in power.”

“It’s not the first loss that Iran has suffered over the course of the last year in the Middle East,” Finer said, pointing to Hamas and Hezbollah, which he described as “badly diminished.” He also said Iran’s attempts to “strike Israel with ballistic missiles” had largely failed.

“This is not a moment of strength for Iran, and what the implications are of that, I’ll let others speculate about but that is, frankly, the result of work by the United States and our partners over the course of the last year, that’s brought us to that moment,” Finer said.

For Russia’s part, Finer said the war in Ukraine had already “shown what kind of a security partner Russia can be to other countries.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivers remarks at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) in Arlington, Virginia, on October 30.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged the rebels that toppled the Assad regime in Syria to “build toward inclusive governance.”

Blinken added that the US has “clear and enduring interests in Syria,” such as fighting ISIS, preventing weapons of mass destruction from falling “into the wrong hands” and avoiding “the export of terrorism and extremism” from the country.

Blinken said that senior State Department officials “are fanning out through the region as we speak” to work with regional partners on the crisis, but did not say whether the US is considering contact with the leading Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a US-designated terrorist organization.

“The real measure of their commitment is not just what they say, but what they do,” said Blinken.

Blinken also said the US is continuing to seek information about American journalist Austin Tice, who was kidnapped by the Assad regime over a decade ago.

“With every party we engage, we’ll continue to seek information about Austin Tice, so that we can find him and bring him home to his family and loved ones,” said Blinken.

The US is working through its partners on the ground in Syria to ensure chemical weapons from the toppled Assad regime don’t fall into the wrong hands, the Pentagon said Monday.

Singh declined to get into the assessed scale of the chemical weapons stock in Syria, and said there are no US forces engaged in “hunting” for them. She did not answer a question on if the US was providing intelligence to others groups to locate them.

“We have expertise in this issue and we’re doing this through our partners on the ground to make sure those weapons don’t fall into the wrong hands,” she said.

A senior Biden administration official told reporters on Sunday that any remaining chemical weapons in Syria were a “top-tier priority.”

Since the stunningly quick fall of the regime of brutal Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad over the weekend, the force posture for the roughly 900 US service members in the country have not changed, Singh added. There has not been direct communication between the US military and the rebel group at the center of the regime’s overthrowing, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), though Singh said the US “certainly [has] counterparts and other groups that have ways of delivering messages to HTS and other rebel groups.”

Meanwhile, the US spoke with Russia across the established deconfliction line in Syria as recently as Sunday, one US official told CNN. It’s unclear what the conversation was specifically about. Assad and his family fled to Russia, which has been one of the regime’s primary allies.

Ultimately, Singh said the fall of the Assad regime “is a fundamental act of justice.”

UK Foreign Minister David Lammy attends an event during the annual Labour Party conference in Liverpool, England, on September 22.

The fact that Syria’s main rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is a proscribed terrorist organization should “rightly make us cautious,” Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy said Monday.

According to the United Kingdom’s list of proscribed terrorist groups, HTS is considered an alternative name to al Qaeda. The group was formed out of a former al Qaeda affiliate but has repeatedly attempted to distance itself from its roots.

“Thus far, HTS has offered reassurances to minorities in Aleppo, Hama and Damascus,” Lammy said at the UK’s House of Commons. “They have also committed to cooperating with the international community over monitoring chemical weapons.”

“We will judge HTS by their actions, monitoring closely how they and other parties to this conflict treat all civilians in areas they control,” he added.

Turkey will open its Yayladagi border gate with Syria to allow for the safe and “voluntary return” of Syrian migrants, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday.

Turkey, which currently hosts 2.9 million Syrian refugees according to Erdogan, would continue to support Syria’s efforts to rebuild, the president said in a speech after a cabinet meeting.

“Our Syrian brothers and sisters have been longing for their homelands for the last 13 years, and I certainly believe that this longing is coming to an end,” Erdogan said.

The president added Turkey would “work day and night” to ensure Syria reaches “permanent peace and stability.”

Left to right: Prime Minister under the ousted Assad regime Mohammed al-Jalali, an unidentified individual, rebel leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani and prime minister of HTS-held territory in northern Syria, Mohammed al-Bashir, meet on December 9.

The leader of the Syrian rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has met the Assad regime’s outgoing prime minister to discuss the transfer of power.

A video shared by the rebels Monday shows the leader of the main rebel group, HTS, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, and the HTS-linked Salvation Government’s Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir, meeting the outgoing Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali.

The rebels said the meeting was to “coordinate the transfer of power in a manner that ensures the provision of services to our people in Syria.”

“The decision hasn’t been made yet of the transitional prime minister. There were talks today between Jolani, Mohammed al-Bashir and the current prime minister. It was in the Four Seasons Hotel,” a source with knowledge of the talks told CNN.

“Al-Bashir is the HTS-linked prime minister of the Salvation Government, which administers the rebel-held Idlib area of northern Syria.”

More background: The meeting in Damascus comes after Ghazi al-Jalali pledged to cooperate with the rebels and endorse “a smooth and systematic transition of government functions” and preserve “state facilities,” in a message recorded after the rebels took Damascus.

“You will see that they are experienced. They have a good success record dealing with certain issues at various capacities, that’s why we need to continue working with them and benefit from [their experiences],” added Jolani — whom the rebels referred to by his real name of Ahmad al-Sharaa.

Correction: This post was updated to reflect that discussions are still underway on a transitional prime minister for Syria and Mohammed al-Bashir has not been appointed.