Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
Lebanon’s judicial authorities have decided to hand over former senior Syrian military officer Maj. Gen. Adel Issa to Damascus after questioning him over crimes he allegedly committed during Syria’s conflict, officials said on Tuesday. Issa will be the first military officer to be handed over by Lebanon since Bashar Assad’s fall in late 2024, and he is expected to stand trial in Syria. There were no immediate details on the alleged crimes.
advertisement
The decision comes days after Lebanon’s parliament voted to abolish the death penalty, making it the first Arab country to do so. The step will become formal once it is published in the Lebanese Official Gazette. Judicial officials said Issa is being handed over in line with a 1951 agreement between Lebanon and Syria that calls for handing over suspected criminals.
On Tuesday afternoon, members of Lebanon’s General Security Directorate took Issa to drive him to a border crossing and hand him over to Syrian authorities, according to two judicial and two security officials. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. After Syrian fighters opposed to Assad marched into Damascus in December 2024 and ended the Assad family’s five-decade rule, a number of military and security officers fled to Lebanon, where some remain.
Dozens of other former members of Assad’s security agencies who are accused of atrocities have been arrested and put on trial in Syria. Last week, a Syrian court sentenced Assad and his younger brother Maher to death in absentia, while their maternal cousin, Brig. Gen. Atef Najib, became the most senior security official to be sentenced to death while in custody. The Assad brothers fled to Russia during the ouster.
Issa was questioned last week by judge Ahmad Rami Hajj, Lebanon’s public prosecutor at the Court of Cassation, over alleged crimes he had committed in Syria’s eastern province of Deir el-Zour and the northern province of Raqqa during the conflict that broke out in 2011. The judicial officials told The Associated Press that Issa denied all the charges against him, saying he was “a military officer carrying out orders”.
The Syrian embassy in Beirut sent Issa’s charge sheet to Lebanese judicial authorities earlier this month, the officials said. Issa was detained on August 8 when he went to the Syrian embassy in Beirut for some paperwork after embassy officials contacted Lebanon’s prosecutor’s office to say that he was wanted in Syria. He has been held at Beirut’s Palace of Justice detention centre. Officials said Issa had fled to Lebanon by crossing illegally after Assad’s fall. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that after commanding the Syrian army’s 17th Division, Issa was moved in 2015 to command ground forces in Deir el-Zour, which borders Iraq, and retired in late 2016.
Issa’s handover marks Lebanon’s first transfer of a former Syrian military officer since Assad’s fall, as Syria continues legal action against former regime figures. The conflict, which began with anti-government protests in March 2011 before turning into a civil war, left half a million people dead and more than 1 million wounded.
With PTI Inputs
– Ends
SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
