SOHR: MoD Affiliates Carried Out Sweida Massacre, Victims Were Civilians

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has accused armed men affiliated with Syria’s Ministry of Defense of carrying out a mass execution of civilians in Sweida, directly contradicting the ministry’s own narrative and dismissing a separate fact-finding committee’s report as a “cover-up” for sectarian killings.

Rami Abdulrahman, the head of the UK-based war monitor, stated that the SOHR has confirmed the identity of the killers and possesses video evidence of the crime.

"We have confirmed the identity of the killers in the mass execution that took place in Sweida," Abdulrahman said. "For several days, we have had a video recording that clearly shows the victims were civilians, not military personnel, contrary to what is being promoted. The killers are armed men affiliated with the Ministry of Defense, and this is one of the crimes of field executions."

He also revealed that the U.S. State Department intervened in the case because one of the victims of the massacre holds American citizenship.

To illustrate the sectarian nature of the violence, Abdulrahman described another video from the village of al-Tha'lah. "We also published a video... showing a citizen inside a school. The killer asks him, 'What is your religion?' He replies, 'Syrian.' The killer repeats the question, and when he says, 'Druze,' he kills him," he detailed. Sweida province is the primary home of Syria’s Druze minority.

Abdulrahman’s claims directly challenge recent official statements. Syria’s Ministry of Defense had announced its own high-level investigation into “shocking and grave violations” in Sweida, attributing them to an "unknown group wearing military uniform" and vowing to punish the perpetrators even if they were affiliated with the ministry.

Furthermore, Abdulrahman harshly criticized the findings of a separate body, the Committee for Investigation and Fact-Finding led by spokesperson Yasser al-Farhan. That committee had recently accused "remnants of the Assad regime" of killing over 1,400 people in a pre-planned plot on the Syrian coast in March.

"As for Yasser al-Farhan, he claims the executions were retaliatory, whereas there are 83 video recordings showing sectarian-based killings, which completely discredits the committee's report," Abdulrahman asserted. He claimed the armed groups that went to the coast, home to a large Alawite population, "did not come to fight the remnants of the regime, but to kill Alawites."

The SOHR director provided a counter-statistic, stating that "532 people have been executed on a sectarian basis since the formation of the fact-finding committee last March."

As further evidence of what he called a cover-up, he cited the case of a child, Ibrahim Shahin, known as "the one with the cloth belt." According to Abdulrahman, "his killers were arrested along with six of their family members for several days and then released."

"For this reason," he concluded, "we affirm that what has been called the 'Fact-Finding Committee' is nothing but a committee to cover up the facts."