Political Security gets lion’s share of weapons: document

(Writing by George Hadad; Translation by Dani Murad)

(Zaman Alwasl-Leaked Documents)- An official document issued in 2013, unveiled the extent of discrimination taking place in distributing weapons on the branches and directorates of regime’s ministry of interior.

The document showed that the ministry’s intelligence agency, named "Political Security Directorate" received two-thirds of the quantity of machine guns "BKC", while the remaining third was received by the “Special Tasks Unit”.

In the document that goes back to March 2013, many police headquarters in major governorates have been mentioned , yet weapons’ reports revealed that these headquarters haven’t received any machine guns "BKC", including the police headquarters of Damascus, Aleppo, Latakia, Hama, and even regime’s security forces which are thousands haven’t got a single “BKC” machine gun.

The same was also applied to “RPG” launchers, showing a significant difference in its distribution, where the Political Security Directorate was provided with nearly 50% of these weapons, equivalent to the total assets of five police headquarters in addition to regime’s security forces . According to the document.

This document provides an intensive overview of regime’s general view toward its military institutions, and its favoritism to formations that have the intelligence characteristic, where it provides them with absolute authority, armament, and finance, and leaves the crumbs to the rest.

Political Security Directorate (Arabic, Idarat al-Amn al-Siyasi) is the security arm of the ministry of interior, and has headquarters and branches in most Syrian cities and towns; this agency has been involved in the suppression of the Syrian revolution along with other intelligence agencies.

The political Security has a major role in igniting the spark of Syrian revolution in the spring of 2011, when “Atef Najib” the political security chief in the city of Daraa, and Bashar Al Assad’s cousin, provoked Daraa’s people and angered them after the detention and torture of a group of children in his branch.

The arrest, detention and torture of 15 young boys for painting slogans of the Arab revolution - "Al Shaab Yoreed Eskaat el nizam" "The people want to topple the regime" on a wall, led to demonstrations in Daraa city that Najib tackled later with live bullets and caused the death of several people that erupted a wave of protests in most Syrian cities.