Regime repression | Intelligence services clamp down on Homs residents for “communicating with relatives in northern Syria”

Homs Province – Syrian Observatory for Human Rights: reliable sources have told SOHR that the regime’s intelligence services are practicing repression on the residents, who refused to leave their areas and chose to stay in Homs city, through monitoring phone calls between them and their relatives in northern Syria.

 

According to SOHR sources, the regime’s intelligence services have carried out many raids on several houses in neighbourhoods of Old Homs city, some parts of which used to by under the control of opposition factions.

 

In one of the houses raided by the regime, intelligence services questioned all inhabitants, as their relatives had left to northern Syria. Intelligence services have accused the family of “communicating with their terrorist relatives”, but when the family denied these accusations, a member of the raiding forces read a paper, which was in his possession,  contained conversations of earlier phone calls between the family and their relatives.

 

In addition, regime security services accurately check money orders to civilians in Homs city from their relatives who live abroad. Syrian Observatory sources have confirmed that regime intelligence arrested several people, including women, in “Karam Al-Shami” neighbourhood in Homs city, after receiving money orders from their relatives.

 

“Regime intelligence have informed the families whose houses were raided, that they are allowed to leave or travel from the city only when getting security approval,” SOHR sources added.