Syria's security forces have detained Wassim al-Assad, a cousin of toppled leader Bashar al-Assad, state news agency SANA said on Saturday.
Wassim al-Assad © SNT
Syria's security forces have detained Wassim al-Assad, a cousin of toppled leader Bashar al-Assad, state news agency SANA said on Saturday.
Wassim al-Assad was sanctioned by the United States in 2023 for leading a paramilitary force backing Assad's army and for trafficking drugs including the amphetamine-like drug captagon.
Bashar al-Assad was toppled by an Islamist-led rebel insurgency in December and fled to Moscow. Most of his family members and inner circle either fled Syria or went underground.
Syria’s new security forces have been pursuing members of the former administration - mainly those involved in the feared security branches accused of rights abuses.
Rights groups have called for a fully-fledged transitional justice process to hold them to account.
Reporting by Maya Gebeily
The Christian community of Damascus, still mourning a suicide bombing that killed 25 people in June, is celebrating Christmas under heavy security as uncertainty looms over Syria’s political future.
Syria's foreign and defence ministers met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Tuesday to discuss expanding military, political and economic cooperation, with a focus on strategic collaboration in defence industries, Syria's state news agency SANA reported.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Tuesday that the military would never fully withdraw from the Gaza Strip for security reasons and that a civilian-military army unit would be established in the Palestinian enclave.
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