DAMASCUS (Reuters) – A Syrian fact-finding committee investigating sectarian killings during clashes between the army and loyalists of Bashar al-Assad said on Tuesday that no one was above the law and it would seek the arrest and prosecution of any perpetrators.
Pressure has been growing on Syria’s Islamist-led government to investigate after reports by witnesses and a war monitor of the killing of hundreds of civilians in villages where the majority of the population are members of the ousted president’s Alawite sect.
“No one is above the law, the committee will relay all the results to the entity that launched it, the presidency, and the judiciary,” the committee’s spokesperson Yasser Farhan said in a televised press conference.
The committee was preparing lists of witnesses to interview and potential perpetrators, and would refer any suspects with sufficient evidence against them to the judiciary, Farhan added.
The U.N human rights office said entire families including women and children were killed in the coastal region as part of a series of sectarian killings by the army against an insurgency by Assad loyalists.
Syria’s interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa told Reuters in an interview on Monday that he could not yet say whether forces from Syria’s defence ministry – which has incorporated former rebel factions under one structure – were involved in the sectarian killings.
Asked whether the committee would seek international help to document violations, Farhan said it was “open” to cooperation but would prefer using its own national mechanisms.
The violence began to spiral on Thursday, when the authorities said their forces in the coastal region came under attack from fighters aligned with the ousted Assad regime.
The Sunni Islamist-led government poured reinforcements into the area to crush what it described as a deadly, well-planned and premeditated assault by remnants of the Assad government.
But Sharaa acknowledged to Reuters that some armed groups had entered without prior coordination with the defence ministry.
The Alawites are the second-largest religious group in Syria after Sunni Muslims. Their faith is an offshoot Shi’ite Islam.
(Reporting by Maya Gebeily, Writing by Nayera Abdallah, Editing by Andrew Heavens, William Maclean)
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