...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State...(HTS, formerly al-Nusra
...formally Jabhat an-Nusrah li-Ahli al-Sham (Support Front for the People of the Levant), also known as al-Qaeda in the Levant. They aim to establish a pan-Arab caliphate. Not the same one as the Islamic State, though .. ...
Front) in Idlib, north Syria, have recently increased as those who oppose or criticize HTS’ policies find themselves ending up in prison.
"A small charge, such as a post on Facebook expressing your opinion or criticizing a foundation affiliated with HTS or its civil wing represented by the Salvation Government, may land you in prison for months, and no one will be able to find out your fate or location," Idlib-based media activist Ahmed al-Khalidi (a pseudonym) said.
"The one who enters HTS prisons is missing, and the one who leaves them is reborn," he added.
Al-Khalidi spent more than three months in prison because of a Facebook post in which he criticized the failure of HTS and its affiliated factions to respond to the bombardment of Idlib.
HTS controls most of Idlib and parts of the countryside of Hama and Latakia after it expelled the rest of the Syrian opposition factions three years ago.
About 2,287 people have been subjected to enforced disappearances and detention in HTS prisons from February 2012 until March 2021, according to a report of the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR).
During July 2021, HTS arbitrarily detained nine civilians, according to the report.
Nour al-Khatib, the head of the Detention and Enforced Disappearance Department at SNHR, told North Press that they documented 57 detentions by HTS during the first half of 2021.
"The security apparatus of HTS is responsible for the detention cases, the investigations, and torture inside the secret detention centers it supervises," al-Khatib added.
"The judiciary cannot intervene in such operations or determine the fate of those detained by the security apparatus unless the latter transfers the detainee to the judiciary for trial."
The SNHR documented about 36 HTS detention centers, some of which it lost during the military operations carried out by the government forces on regions in the countryside of Idlib and the western countryside of Aleppo.
In early August, HTS detained media activist Adham Dasharni and his wife, from Taftanaz town east of Idlib, for several days due to his writing a post on social media.
In his post, Dasharni criticized the failure of the military factions operating in north Syria to "support Daraa," and mocked the decision to prevent the entry of mulukhiyah from Aleppo countryside to Idlib.
Days before, HTS threatened Muammar Haj Hamdan, a teacher from Binnish city east of Idlib, with arrest due to his publishing posts on his personal page on Facebook in which he criticized the holy warrior factions.
Many reports issued by local and international organizations and commissions mention that HTS has arrested activists, media personnel, and civilians who oppose it or criticize its policies and those of the Salvation Government.
In March, HTS arrested politicians and journalists, including a member of the Syrian National Coalition (SNC). Moreover, it arrested a number of media personnel and restricted their work in the areas it controls.
During his meeting with American journalist Martin Smith in February, HTS’s leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani denied accusations that HTS arrests its critics and tortures them in prisons, and said that his faction "arrests only regime agents, Russians, and ISIS cells."
However,
a lie repeated often enough remains a lie...
al-Khalidi said that HTS prisons are full of civilians and activists who HTS has falsified charges against, especially those who repeatedly criticize it and whose views are not in line with its own.
"By arresting them, HTS seeks to be the most powerful authority in the region, as it has become the judge, the ruler, the executioner, and the prosecutor," according to al-Khalidi.