Coalition agrees on salary for Harmoush family after procrastination

ISTANBUL (Zaman Alwasl)- Opposition National Coalition agreed after long procrastination to pay a monthly salary to the family of first Syrian Army defectors, Lieutenant Colonel Hussein Harmoush, who still in Syrian regime’s prison since September 2011, Source told Zaman Alwasl.

Ghufran Hijazi, Harmoush’s wife, has made vigorous efforts to get an income for her family after almost three years of suffering.

Mr. Ahmed Jarba, NC leader, who met with Hijazi, said the salary is from “His own pocket, not from coalition’s financial allocations, in order to shut the door behind any further demands from the families of martyrs and detainees of Syrian army defectors,” according to Zaman Alwasl reporter.

Last November, Human Rights activist and Actress Yara Sabri posted on her Facebook page that “Harmoush is still arrested in Sednaya Military Prison near Damascus,” Sabri was quoting an ex-prisoner as saying.

In January 2012, Syrian Human Rights watchdogs and activists said that soldiers from the Syrian Air Intelligence carried out the death sentence by firing squad against Harmoush.

Harmoush appeared in a video in June 2011 denouncing Assad’s regime and calling on fellow soldiers to rebel. Al-Harmoush was disappeared from a refugee camp where he had been living in Turkey on August 29. Then he appeared on Syria TV, contradicting previous statements he had made- Under death threats-, saying that "during my service in the Syrian army, nobody ordered me to fire at civilians."

The Syrian, Turkish, and Iranian intelligence were accused in bringing the dissident back, according to information posted on the social networking website Facebook, Turkish intelligence officers who, like Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, belong to the Alawite sect, took part in the mission of bringing Harmoush, the most senior defector in the army, back to Syria, according to Al Arabiya Net in September 2011.

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YouTube: Syrian Soldier Hussein Harmoush announces his split from the Army and the formation of the Free Arab Syrian Army on 09/06/2011. The people of Syria are one against the dictator.