Cousin of Syria’s Assad receives 20-year sentence for murder

 

A cousin of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for the murder of a military officer last summer, a security source said Friday.

“A court in Latakia on Thursday sentenced Suleiman al-Assad to 20 years in prison for the murder of Colonel Hassan al-Sheikh,” the source said.

The murder took place in August on the road between Latakia city and Qardaha, the ancestral village of the Assad family.

Accounts of the incident vary. But according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and supporters of President Assad on social media, Suleiman al-Assad was angered when al-Shaikh, who was in a car with his family, overtook his vehicle in a Latakia street, and so shot him dead nearby shortly afterwards.

Latakia province is a regime stronghold and heartland of the Alawite minority to which the president, Sheikh and Suleiman al-Assad all belong. The incident raised tensions within the community.

Sheikh’s relatives said at the time that the president had pledged “to punish the perpetrator, whoever he is”.

Suleiman al-Assad’s father, Hilal al-Assad, a first cousin of the president, headed the defence forces in Latakia city before his death in March 2014 during clashes with rebels in nearby Kasab.

Latakia, Syria’s fifth largest city, has a large minority of Alawites – the branch of Shia Islam to which Assad belongs.

In Syria’s continuing civil war, Alawites, who make up roughly 10 percent of the country’s 23 million population, have largely backed Assad against the mainly Sunni Muslim insurgents.

But opposition activists say dissent has been growing within Assad’s Latakia regional heartland largely due to the high death toll of Alawite fighters and civilians – in the tens of thousands – in the conflict, as well as official corruption.

Source: france 24 – Cousin of Syria’s Assad receives 20-year sentence for murder – France 24