Trials of officers who fought on Assad's side have begun in Syria

The new Syrian authorities have started legal proceedings against the surrendered military personnel associated with the government of the country's former president Bashar al-Assad. This was told to "Izvestia" by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

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"Hundreds of soldiers and officers have surrendered their weapons, with a large number of representatives of the former regime arrested, trials are underway over captured soldiers and officers," it said.

The judiciary will examine the cases of detainees suspected of the killings and release those whose non-involvement is proven, the rights organization added.

According to the Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, a judicial committee affiliated with the justice ministry of the interim government formed by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, a terrorist organization banned in Russia) will review the cases.

"This will escalate into repression because this is a common practice in the Middle East. The questions here are more in their nature and scope <...> Obviously, the focus is on all intelligence functionaries and other figures who, according to the forces that came to power in Damascus, were involved in one way or another in harsh actions against the opposition. "It is still difficult to talk about the scale of these processes," Kirill Semenov, an expert at the Russian Council on Foreign Affairs, told Izvestia.

Read more in Izvestia's exclusive piece:

Responsibility for actions: trials of military officers close to Assad have begun in Syria