Terrorist Confesses to Being Part of Armed Group Responsible for Massacres, Participating in Smuggling Weapons

Terrorist Confesses to Being Part of Armed Group Responsible for Massacres, Participating in Smuggling Weapons Jul 07, 2012

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – Terrorist Ali Jassem al-Mohammad confessed to being a member of an armed terrorist group that was responsible for many massacres against civilians and law-enforcement sources, including the attack on al-Khalidiye infirmary where they killed everyone inside it and photographed the bodies to use the images to frame the armed forces of their crime. In confessions broadcast by the Syrian TV on Friday, al-Mohammad also confessed to smuggling weapons and communications devices from Lebanon and meeting opposition figures abroad who fund gunmen, in addition to meeting a correspondent of al-Jazeera and coordinating with him. Al-Mohammad, who was born in Deir Ezzor in 1980 and lives in Bab al-Dreib, Homs, said that he visited Saudi Arabia in early 2011 and came back to Syria in May 2011, which is when he started participating in protests and met a man named Mansour al-Atasi who assigned him to coordinate protests. Later, he bought a rifle and joined gunmen who were using a school in Bab al-Dreib as their headquarters. The 80 gunmen were led by Nazir Mando, who put him in charge of a blockade in the area. Al-Mohammad said that he and 300 gunmen from various neighborhoods attacked al-Khalidiye infirmary from all sides, using RPG launchers and AK47 and M-16 rifles, killing 40 of the people in the infirmary and kidnapping the remaining ten. He said that he and his accomplices gathered the bodies, stripped them naked, bound their arms and photographed them to pass the attack as a massacre committed by security forces and the army, then they took the bodies to a graveyard near Jaafar al-Tayyar mosque and buried them in a mass grave there. Al-Mohammad noted that two men from Yemen and one from Lebanon were among the gunmen in his area, and that they were in charge of manufacturing improvised explosive devices (IED) and installing them in cars that were later detonated in neighborhoods where the people support the government. He also confessed to being part of an attack by 150 gunmen at a security checkpoint in Homs that was making the gunmen's movement difficult. Al-Mohammad said he accompanied a man to Deir Ezzor to buy weapons, where they met a man working as a driver on the Homs-Deir Ezzor road and asked him to provide ten rifles and 10,000 rounds, and two days later the man brought them 12 automatic rifles and the rounds they asked for. Later, al-Mohammad fled Homs in fear of being arrested and went to Lebanon in November 2011, contacting Nazir Mando's brother in Tripoli, who rented him a house where he stayed with a man named Mohammad Eirout from Banyas. During his stay at that house, al-Mohammad met a man called Abu Mohammad al-Rifai who owns al-Bashaer charity for helping refugees, along with another man from Banyas who was on the run from the law and a "sheikh" called Salem al-Rifai who provided support to gunmen, adding that he also met MP Khaled al-Zaher who supports the gunmen in Tripoli. While in Tripoli, he and his cohorts were given weapons by a "sheikh"  called Mazen Jbara, and they took part in the attack on Jabal Mohsen. Afterwards, he was part in smuggling weapons to Syria, serving as a middle man and giving 12 rifles and a night-vision scope to a smuggler along with USD 1200 which were sent to Nazir Mando in Homs. Al-Mohammad also travelled to Jordan from Lebanon, meeting several opposition figures through Zaki al-Droubi and Abdelrahim Darawsheh, and that the latter organized protests in front of the Syrian Embassy in Amman where many opposition figures met in addition to Yasser Abu Hilaleh, the director of al-Jazeera office. Al-Mohammad asked Abu Hilaleh to provide him with communication devices to send him reports from Syria, but the latter declined and gave him his phone number instead to keep him informed. He said that opposition figures and gunmen would register at the refugees commission to receive money, and that he did likewise and received funds. Al-Mohammad then went back to Lebanon then returned to Homs, carrying three Thuraya satellite phones sent by Amin Mando to his brother. He remained in Homs for 7 days then returned to Lebanon, and was once against asked to return to Homs to deliver two Thuraya phones and USD 20,000 to Nazir. In April, al-Mohammad left Homs for Damascus to meet with opposition figures including Mansour al-Atasi, who introduced him to a man in al-Hajar al-Aswad area and another in al-Midan, and he offered to provide weapons for the two areas. H. Sabbagh