Syria detains Assad-era general accused of bloody crackdown on protests

Syria's Internal Security Forces announced Monday the arrest of Major-General Mohammed Ali Durgham, a senior military officer from the previous regime. Authorities accuse him of involvement in two major episodes of state violence spanning decades: the notorious 1982 massacre in Hama and the violent suppression of pro-democracy protests that erupted across the country in 2011.

Durgham's alleged role in the 2011 crackdown centers on direct orders to fire on unarmed civilians. Human Rights Watch previously documented testimony from a Syrian army defector identifying Durgham as one of the generals who commanded troops to shoot at demonstrators deployed to Damascus and surrounding areas. During this period, Durgham served as a field commander within the Fourth Division, an elite military unit led by Maher al-Assad, the brother of then-President Bashar al-Assad.

His connection to the 1982 Hama events traces back further in his military career. According to Syrian authorities, Durgham began his service as a squad commander in the Defence Brigades during the crackdown in Hama Governorate that year. The operation, launched by then-president Hafez al-Assad in response to civil unrest, resulted in an estimated death toll between 10,000 and 40,000 people over the course of nearly a month.

The detention reflects Syria's new transitional government's commitment to investigating alleged crimes by former regime officials. Since Bashar al-Assad's overthrow in December 2024, authorities have arrested dozens of security personnel and officials from the previous administration. Earlier this month, another former major-general, Jalal Kamel Saqr, was detained on charges related to war crimes and arbitrary detention.

These prosecutions represent an initial attempt by Syria's interim leadership, primarily composed of figures from the opposition coalition Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, to establish accountability for the systematic abuses documented throughout the Assad era.