Faisal Ahmad al-Khalouf, preacher and imam of a mosque in northern Idlib province, died inside the prisons of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham after three years in detention on charges of collaborating with the Syrian regime.
Sources from the town of Ma'arshamsha confirmed to Zaman al-Wasl that "the security apparatus of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham informed Khalouf's family of his death inside its prisons, without explaining the causes of death, or allowing his family to receive his body."
Activists say al-Khalouf had been accused of collaborating with regime security against the HTC after he was caught transferring money from the regime-controlled areas in Hama province to the opposition-held areas.
Killings under torture were repeated several times in HTS prisons, and many detainees were brought before the courts the execution of the death sentence or retribution.
Ahmed Omar Abbous, another civilian of Idlib province, had died three weeks ago after ten months in the prisons of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham. His body was not handed over to his family. He was arrested in early May last year from his home in the village of Kafr Lata in the Jabal al-Arba’een region, without knowing the reasons for the arrest.
In May 2018, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham was added to the State Department’s existing designation of its predecessor, the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). Today, HTS can be thought of as a relatively localized Syrian terrorist organization, which retains a Salafi-jihadist ideology despite its public split from al-Qaeda in 2017, according to the Strategic and International Studies Center.
Syria’s conflict began in March 2011 and has killed nearly half a million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million.
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