Syria announces end of Homs security sweep, hundreds reportedly arrested

Syrian state media said a five-day security operation in Homs city ended Monday, with a war monitor reporting hundreds of arrests.

“We announce the end of the combing campaign in the neighborhoods of Homs city after achieving the campaign’s objectives,” the SANA news agency said, quoting the head of Homs’s General Security agency without naming the official.

“A number of suspects were arrested, and we transferred those proven to have committed crimes to the judiciary and released a number of others,” the statement said, adding some suspects were still under investigation.

The campaign targeted “weapons depots” and saw the arrest of “criminals who have harmed the Syrian people for 13 years and had not handed over their weapons in settlement centers,” SANA reported.

The official rejected any type of “revenge outside the justice system” and promised to hold accountable anyone who commits such crimes, calling on residents to report “any violations” by fighters.

Since opposition forces overthrew president Bashar al-Assad last month, the transitional government has been registering former conscripts and soldiers and asking them to relinquish their arms.

Authorities said previously that some pro-Assad militias and former government operatives had refused to hand over their weapons in Homs, Syria’s third-largest city.

Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, told AFP that 150 people had been arrested in Homs city and at least 500 others detained in the Homs area.

Last week, a former official in charge of surveillance cameras inside the notorious Saydnaya prison and a field commander accused of committing “crimes against the Syrian people” was arrested in the Homs sweeps, SANA reported an interior ministry source as saying.