Syria Detains Opponents as It Reasserts Control

(Wall Street Journal)- Weeks after he disappeared while fleeing the devastated city of Aleppo, Abdulhadi Kamel of the Syrian civil-defense group White Helmets turned up last month in an online video posted by a Russian-language news agency.

His hair and beard disheveled, Mr. Kamel denounced the work of his Nobel Peace Prize-nominated organization in opposition-held areas of the country, saying it was all staged to implicate the Syrian government and its Russian allies in the killing of civilians.

“I hope our state forgives us,” Mr. Kamel said, in what his former colleagues said was a forced confession while under detention by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. The White Helmets said he is still being held by the regime and called for his immediate release.

As the regime regains territory from weakened rebels six years into the Syrian war, opposition activists and residents say it is using mass detentions and other security-state tactics to snuff out dissent in places that were out of its control for years.

Critics say it is part of a long-running pattern of abuse. A report released Tuesday by Amnesty International said the government pursued a policy of “extermination” in the military-run Sadnaya prison, hanging as many as 13,000 prisoners there since the uprising against the Assad regime began in March 2011.

At least once a week—and often twice—authorities executed prisoners in the middle of the night in groups of up to 50, according to the report, which Amnesty said was based on dozens of interviews with former detainees, prison guards, judges and lawyers.

Mr. Kamel was one of nearly 1,500 people caught up in a regime dragnet in the final month as Aleppo fell to the government and its allies, according to the opposition group Syrian Network for Human Rights.

Iranian-backed Shiite militiamen and Syrian soldiers at a checkpoint stopped the convoy, which was escorted by the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to people who were in the convoy and the White Helmets. Mr. Kamel was shot in the shoulder and arrested by regime forces along with several others, according to the White Helmets.

Most of those caught in the dragnet were men wanted for compulsory military service, according to the network. They also included many women and 17 families, including children.

Those who have recently been imprisoned are in addition to tens of thousands of detainees who human rights groups allege have been forcibly disappeared in the regime’s labyrinth of notorious prisons over the course of the war.

The regime has long denied such allegations. But it reports regularly on wanted people turning themselves in and “settling their legal status”—surrendering and reconciling with the government.

Syrian officials had no immediate comment on the recent wave of arrests in Aleppo.

Former residents of Aleppo and activist groups say that since the regime consolidated control over the entire city, it has arrested people who took part in protests, nurses and doctors who treated the victims of Russian and regime airstrikes and humanitarian workers.

“The regime went from house to house with militiamen from the same neighborhoods with lists of those wanted,” said Mahmoud Ahmad, an antigovernment activist who left the city in December. “They arrested men because they had demonstrated against the regime or had repaired a car for the rebels.”

Detaining dissenters is a policy “that has been going on for decades and it could continue for years after the conflict,” said Diana Semaan, a Syrian researcher for Amnesty International.

Ghadeer, a former Aleppo resident who did humanitarian work in the rebel-held side of the city, said she spent 20 days in regime-controlled areas of the city after being forced to flee her home during the government assault. She said she left the house only once and hid her face with a niqab, or face veil, fearing she might be identified and arrested by regime soldiers or their allies.

Soon after the regime regained control of Aleppo, it posted checkpoints manned by informants, said Ghadeer, who asked to be identified only by her first name. After nearly three weeks, she said she paid a man to smuggle her out to the nearby countryside still under rebel control.

Four of her former colleagues have been arrested, she said.

“They went to the regime areas believing that they would be OK because they had never carried a weapon,” she said. “Whomever worked in charity or used to distribute bread or was in any organization is wanted. It’s like a fishing expedition and in the end they were fishing us out.”

In December, the United Nations said it was deeply concerned over the fate of hundreds of men reported missing after fleeing into government-controlled areas given the regime’s “terrible record of arbitrary detention, torture and enforced disappearances.” The U.N. said in January it had yet to verify their whereabouts.

At Syrian peace talks last month, rebel leaders said they had secured a guarantee from Russia that 13,000 female prisoners would be released by the regime as part of an agreement to secure a shaky cease-fire. None have been released yet.