Writing by Faris Rifai
(Zaman Al Wasl)- Aleppo city towards the end of the 1970s and the start of the 1980s appeared like other Syrian provinces a coal burning under the ashes especially after the artillery school incident in 16/06/1979 which led the regime to tighten its grip on every inch of land with fire and iron.
Most of those protesting the al-Assad regime were youths, university students, and high school students and destroying them was a principal aim for Hafez al-Assad at that time.
Among those was the lawyer Ahmed al-Mousa, an ambitious young man who refused tyranny and injustice as his son Nizar recounts.
Al-Mousa came from a village in Jabal al-Zawiya. He studied and persevered in his studies crossing 12 kilometers in both directions to go to school as there was no school in his village.
Nizar al-Mousa said, “my father continued his studies in Idlib and then joined the teacher training college to spend the next 20 years traveling between eastern Qamishli, Saraqib, and Algeria where he went as an exchange teacher for two years. He finally settled in Aleppo as a teacher and monitor in several schools before quitting education to work in law using the degree he attained while he was teaching.”
Al-Mousa participated, as his son confirms, in the 1967 war with the rank of candidate, and advanced after the ceasefire with a plan to regain several villages in the occupied Golan, and the response to his plan was his immediate discharge.
In September 18, 1980, Ahmad al-Mousa’s home overflowed with university youth, among them a recently graduated doctor, two medical students, science graduate, and mathematics students. All of them had been his students in their high school years.
Al-Mousa recounted that his father and those with him planned to fast the next day, a Thursday, and they prayed together at dawn. Moments later, they heard noise outside the building. Al-Mousa took some precautions while confirming that the building was being searched and the regime soldiers filled the place.
A short time after, there was knock at the door, his father procrastinated in opening it while everyone took their places and his wife, in another room, put on her veil.
Our speaker who was 15, at the time, said, “we all woke up to a violent knocking on the door, and when it was opened the soldiers spread out in the house searching and inspecting. The dawn visitors tied my fathers’ hands behind his back, and after several insults led him out of the building.”
Nizar recounted, “a fierce battle took place between the young men and the regime forces,” indicating that he went out to the street to see his father stood far away with soldier was planted before him brandishing a gun loaded as he swore, blasphemed, and insulted.
He added, “after approaching my father, the soldier asked us to lay down on the ground and after several arguments we lay down on the ground,” but the issue did not go down, “as it was not one of my fathers’ traits to not be a man in such situations and he was an exemplary man.”
Our speaker continued that his father, “stood up again refusing to obey orders, he said swore loudly at Hafez the dog, as he called him, which terrified that coward soldier who shot us; my father whose hands were tied and I, a boy of 15. My father died a martyr immediately and I sustained extensive injuries.”
Following that a fierce battle ensued within the building filling the place with the sound of bullets, grenades, and RBG burning rockets. The fighting continued for 4 hours and a half, for all the young men in the house to be martyred and a large number of soldiers were killed in plain view but the regime covered up the issue.
Nizar al-Mousa was transported to al-Razi hospital after an injury in his hand and waist. His mother and brother were taken to political branch for two days for his brother to die there. His mother, Fatma Hamouda was detained, investigated with, threatened with death and rape if she did not confess the names of those who visited her husband. When they gave up trying to illicit a confession from her they moved her to Aleppo’s central prison where she spent 6 years behind bars during which she developed breast cancer, so she was released as the prison did not want her to die there.
Our speaker was kept in al-Razi hospital and then transported to the political security branch to be put in solitary confinement despite his young age. He was severely investigated with by Major Mohammad ShoSheh and the investigation was accompanied by all ties of extreme torture from cans to cables in addition to electric shocks which our speaker said was the most dangerous type of torture and the most painful for him.
Nizar explained that the doctor who tended his waist injury in the hospital whispered to the Major, “without the wheel (torture method) he will not be able to take it.” Nizar spent 12 years in the regime prison, 7 of those years in the terrible Palmyra prison.
The Assad regime was not content with killing al-Mousa, imprisoning his wife and son for several years but burnt the family house and then sold it to one of the military intelligence personnel. Nizar al-Musa revealed that the political intelligence branch in Aleppo took over the house, and when some of the personnel discovered that the house was not legally possessed by the intelligence they colluded with members of the military security to buy the house from the building owner.
Al-Mousa continued, “the branch members came to his detained mother in Aleppo central prison and told her they are selling the house and that she can have first bid but they wanted 83,000 Syrian pounds.”
He explained, “the members of political security brought the person who owned the building and changed possession of the house to one of them by threatening and accusing the building owner of his connection to my father, so he was forced to sign and sell the house.”
The regime continued to harass the family after that preventing them from obtaining employment, preventing their promotion, and calling them in for questioning every time something happened. He indicated that his younger brother experienced hell when he served his mandatory military service as his commander would not grant him leave and was very harsh with him as a revenge against the son of the martyr. This brother died in events in al-Nasiri neighborhood in Aleppo after the regime airplane dropped a barrel close to Ayn Jalout school in 2014.
On the 36th anniversary for the martyrdom of the lawyer Ahmad al-Musa, Nizar al-Mousa is saddened and bitter about the Syrian situation. He continues to search for those who benefited from what happened, for those who understood the lesson. He feels that his father, the human, when he sacrificed himself, his money, his wife and his son, “was looking only for our dignity, our future without constraint, and our life as humans and not as slaves in the farm.”
(Zaman Al Wasl)- Aleppo city towards the end of the 1970s and the start of the 1980s appeared like other Syrian provinces a coal burning under the ashes especially after the artillery school incident in 16/06/1979 which led the regime to tighten its grip on every inch of land with fire and iron.
Most of those protesting the al-Assad regime were youths, university students, and high school students and destroying them was a principal aim for Hafez al-Assad at that time.
Among those was the lawyer Ahmed al-Mousa, an ambitious young man who refused tyranny and injustice as his son Nizar recounts.
Al-Mousa came from a village in Jabal al-Zawiya. He studied and persevered in his studies crossing 12 kilometers in both directions to go to school as there was no school in his village.
Nizar al-Mousa said, “my father continued his studies in Idlib and then joined the teacher training college to spend the next 20 years traveling between eastern Qamishli, Saraqib, and Algeria where he went as an exchange teacher for two years. He finally settled in Aleppo as a teacher and monitor in several schools before quitting education to work in law using the degree he attained while he was teaching.”
Al-Mousa participated, as his son confirms, in the 1967 war with the rank of candidate, and advanced after the ceasefire with a plan to regain several villages in the occupied Golan, and the response to his plan was his immediate discharge.
In September 18, 1980, Ahmad al-Mousa’s home overflowed with university youth, among them a recently graduated doctor, two medical students, science graduate, and mathematics students. All of them had been his students in their high school years.
Al-Mousa recounted that his father and those with him planned to fast the next day, a Thursday, and they prayed together at dawn. Moments later, they heard noise outside the building. Al-Mousa took some precautions while confirming that the building was being searched and the regime soldiers filled the place.
A short time after, there was knock at the door, his father procrastinated in opening it while everyone took their places and his wife, in another room, put on her veil.
Our speaker who was 15, at the time, said, “we all woke up to a violent knocking on the door, and when it was opened the soldiers spread out in the house searching and inspecting. The dawn visitors tied my fathers’ hands behind his back, and after several insults led him out of the building.”
Nizar recounted, “a fierce battle took place between the young men and the regime forces,” indicating that he went out to the street to see his father stood far away with soldier was planted before him brandishing a gun loaded as he swore, blasphemed, and insulted.
He added, “after approaching my father, the soldier asked us to lay down on the ground and after several arguments we lay down on the ground,” but the issue did not go down, “as it was not one of my fathers’ traits to not be a man in such situations and he was an exemplary man.”
Our speaker continued that his father, “stood up again refusing to obey orders, he said swore loudly at Hafez the dog, as he called him, which terrified that coward soldier who shot us; my father whose hands were tied and I, a boy of 15. My father died a martyr immediately and I sustained extensive injuries.”
Following that a fierce battle ensued within the building filling the place with the sound of bullets, grenades, and RBG burning rockets. The fighting continued for 4 hours and a half, for all the young men in the house to be martyred and a large number of soldiers were killed in plain view but the regime covered up the issue.
Nizar al-Mousa was transported to al-Razi hospital after an injury in his hand and waist. His mother and brother were taken to political branch for two days for his brother to die there. His mother, Fatma Hamouda was detained, investigated with, threatened with death and rape if she did not confess the names of those who visited her husband. When they gave up trying to illicit a confession from her they moved her to Aleppo’s central prison where she spent 6 years behind bars during which she developed breast cancer, so she was released as the prison did not want her to die there.
Our speaker was kept in al-Razi hospital and then transported to the political security branch to be put in solitary confinement despite his young age. He was severely investigated with by Major Mohammad ShoSheh and the investigation was accompanied by all ties of extreme torture from cans to cables in addition to electric shocks which our speaker said was the most dangerous type of torture and the most painful for him.
Nizar explained that the doctor who tended his waist injury in the hospital whispered to the Major, “without the wheel (torture method) he will not be able to take it.” Nizar spent 12 years in the regime prison, 7 of those years in the terrible Palmyra prison.
The Assad regime was not content with killing al-Mousa, imprisoning his wife and son for several years but burnt the family house and then sold it to one of the military intelligence personnel. Nizar al-Musa revealed that the political intelligence branch in Aleppo took over the house, and when some of the personnel discovered that the house was not legally possessed by the intelligence they colluded with members of the military security to buy the house from the building owner.
Al-Mousa continued, “the branch members came to his detained mother in Aleppo central prison and told her they are selling the house and that she can have first bid but they wanted 83,000 Syrian pounds.”
He explained, “the members of political security brought the person who owned the building and changed possession of the house to one of them by threatening and accusing the building owner of his connection to my father, so he was forced to sign and sell the house.”
The regime continued to harass the family after that preventing them from obtaining employment, preventing their promotion, and calling them in for questioning every time something happened. He indicated that his younger brother experienced hell when he served his mandatory military service as his commander would not grant him leave and was very harsh with him as a revenge against the son of the martyr. This brother died in events in al-Nasiri neighborhood in Aleppo after the regime airplane dropped a barrel close to Ayn Jalout school in 2014.
On the 36th anniversary for the martyrdom of the lawyer Ahmad al-Musa, Nizar al-Mousa is saddened and bitter about the Syrian situation. He continues to search for those who benefited from what happened, for those who understood the lesson. He feels that his father, the human, when he sacrificed himself, his money, his wife and his son, “was looking only for our dignity, our future without constraint, and our life as humans and not as slaves in the farm.”
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