Accused of “cooperating with ISIS” | Al-Badiyah intelligence service and IRGC storm houses and arrest civilians in Palmyra city
Homs province: Reliable SOHR sources have reported that members of a joint patrol of Al-Badiyah intelligence branch and Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) stormed several houses in a neighbourhood in the western part of Palmyra city in the eastern countryside of Homs, arresting several people for “cooperating with ISIS and providing the organisation with information about the positions of Iranian-backed militias in Palmyra city.”
On May 9, SOHR activists reported that ISIS members roamed in two cars and several motorbikes with ISIS flags being installed on them near Wady Al-Abyad, nearly 17 kilometres to the north-west of Palmyra city in east Homs countryside in the centre of Syria near Al-Amor Mountain.
This is the first parade of its kind by ISIS in this area since regime forces and Iranian-backed militias controlled the area in March 2017, after violent battles with ISIS. This development marked significant increase in the activity of ISIS, where ISIS members used to appear only in Palmyra desert to execute attacks on separate occasions.
While in April, reliable sources told SOHR that regime security services sent patrols of military police branch in Palmyra to Al-Sukhnah city in Homs countryside to arrest several persons, including a commander of the National Defence Forces known by his initials as M. K. who is relative to a man known as Al-Sheikh F. S. The commander was arrested for “cooperating with ISIS.”
SOHR sources confirmed that many efforts were underway to release those arrested men by their acquaintances.
Also, on April 4, SOHR activists reported that patrols of Al-Badiyah intelligence branch and the military security station stormed houses in Al-Qaryatayn, under the pretext that “there were weapons in the villages,” arresting several young men for “communicating with their relatives in the Syrian north and Al-Rukban camp,” and taking them to the station of Al-Qaryatayn.