DAMASCUS: A Syria war monitor said Thursday the country’s new authorities had arrested a military justice official under the ousted government of president Bashar Al-Assad who issued death sentences in the notorious Saydnaya prison. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Mohammed Kanjo Hassan was arrested in the coastal Tartus province, a stronghold of Assad’s clan, along with 20 members of his entourage.

Kanjo Hassan headed Syria’s military field court from 2011 to 2014, the first three years of the war that began with Assad’s crackdown on Arab Spring-inspired democracy protests, according to Diab Serriya, co-founder of the Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison. He was later promoted to chief of military justice nationwide, he said, adding that he sentenced “thousands of people” to death.

Serriya’s group estimates that Kanjo Hassan made $150 million dollars from bribes paid by relatives of detainees desperate for information on their loved ones. Syria’s exiled National Coalition of opposition forces welcomed the arrest, describing it as an “important step on the path to justice and the

prosecution of those who committed crimes against the Syrian people”.

The arrest comes a day after 14 security personnel of the new authorities and three gunmen were killed in clashes when forces tried to arrest Hassan, according to the Observatory. On Thursday, state news agency SANA said security forces launched an operation against pro-Assad militias in the western province of Tartus, “neutralizing a certain number” of armed men. According to the Observatory, three gunmen linked with Assad’s government were killed in the operation.

With 500,000 dead in the war and more than 100,000 missing, the new authorities have pledged justice for the victims of abuses under the deposed ruler. The Saydnaya complex, the site of extrajudicial executions, torture and forced disappearances, epitomized the atrocities committed against Assad’s opponents. The fate of tens of thousands of prisoners and missing people remains one of the most harrowing legacies of his rule.

In central Damascus, relatives of some of the missing have hung up posters of their loved ones, in the hope that with Assad’s ouster, they may one day learn what happened to them. World powers and international organizations have called for the urgent establishment of mechanisms for accountability.

But some members of the Alawite community fear that with Assad gone, they may be at risk of attacks from groups hungry for revenge or driven by sectarian hate. On Wednesday, angry protests erupted in several areas around Syria, including Assad’s hometown of Qardaha, over a video showing an attack on an Alawite shrine that circulated online. The Observatory said that one demonstrator was killed and five others wounded “after security forces... opened fire to disperse” a crowd in the central city of Homs.

The transitional authorities appointed by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) said in a statement that the shrine attack took place early this month, with the interior ministry saying it was carried out by “unknown groups” and that republishing the video served to “stir up strife”. On Thursday, the information ministry introduced a ban on publishing or distributing “any content or information with a sectarian nature aimed at spreading division and discrimination”. Mohammed Othman, the newly appointed governor of the Latakia region, met Alawite sheikhs to “encourage community cohesion and civil peace”, SANA reported.

In one of Wednesday’s protests over the video, large crowds chanted slogans including “Alawite, Sunni, we want peace”. In Homs, where the authorities imposed a nighttime curfew, 42-year-old resident Hadi reported “a vast deployment of HTS men in areas where there were protests”. “There is a lot of fear,” he said. In coastal Latakia, protester Ghidak Mayya, 30, said that for now, Alawites were “listening to calls for calm”, but putting too much pressure on the community “risks an explosion”.

In a predominantly Alawite neighborhood of Damascus, Alawite sheikh Ali Dareer said that homes had been vandalized and people beaten on the basis of their religious identity, despite HTS promises the sect would be treated with respect. He blamed “a third party” trying to incite discord. Dareer told Reuters that the community had extended its hand to the new government but there “have been many violations”, citing multiple accounts of people being beaten at a checkpoint.

An HTS fighter in the area said there had been an incident on Thursday in which Alawites were taken off a bus and beaten because of their religion, but denied that HTS was responsible. Taher Dawwa, a 38-year-old Alawite who was a military volunteer under Assad, said the “burden of all mistakes” should not be placed on one sect. “We don’t want division.”

A delegation from Iraq met with the new authorities Thursday to discuss “security and stability needs on the two countries’ shared border”, Iraqi state media said, while Lebanon, which has a fraught history with Syria, said it hoped for better ties with its neighbor going forward.

Iran has criticized the course of events in Syria in recent days. On Sunday, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called on Syrian youth to “stand with firm determination against those who have orchestrated and brought about this insecurity”. Khamenei forecast “that a strong and honorable group will also emerge in Syria because today Syrian youth have nothing to lose”, calling the country unsafe.

Syria’s newly appointed foreign minister, Asaad Hassan Al-Shibani, said on Tuesday that Iran must respect the will of the Syrian people and Syria’s sovereignty and security. “We warn them against spreading chaos in Syria and we hold them accountable for the repercussions of the latest remarks,” he said. – Agencies