Turkey blamed after defector is returned to Syria

Lieutenant Colonel Hussein al-Harmoush was first senior military officer to defect during anti-Assad uprising The first senior military officer to defect during the Syrian uprising has been arrested by regime forces after disappearing from Turkey, and is set to appear on state television, prompting opposition activists to claim he had been betrayed by his hosts as part of a deal. Lieutenant Colonel Hussein al-Harmoush, who defected in June with senior members of an army unit responsible for a crackdown in the town of Jisr al-Shighour, went missing from a refugee camp in southern Turkey two weeks ago. He had been received by Turkish officials as one of thousands of refugees who had fled Jisr al-Shighour and a series of security sweeps that followed. He had called several times for other Syrian forces to follow his lead. The Syrian Arab news agency said Harmoush’s “confession” was scheduled to be broadcast on Thursday night. Wissam Tarif from the human rights organisation Avaaz said he had been told that Turkish officials had traded Harmoush for nine members of the PKK Kurdish militant group, which Turkey has proscribed as a terrorist organisation. “We have heard from the Kurds that there has been a deal done,” he said. “The Turks have been extremely interested in finding ways to clearly define the Kurdish role inside the [Syrian opposition] transitional council.” A spokesman for the Turkish government said that he had no information about Harmoush. When asked on Thursday in Cairo about the missing officer, Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, did not respond. Turkey has been a crucial base for the Syrian opposition, which on Thursday announced the formation of a 140-member transitional council, in an effort to provide a unified voice and eventually an alternative to four decades of strongman rule in Syria. After six months of uprising in Syria, which has been met by a relentless crackdown by government forces, other regional states are also trying to take a stake in nascent opposition political groupings. Both Qatar and Iran have offered to hold summits, along with France, which is calling for President Bashar al-Assad to leave office. The Syrian regime consistently casts the uprising as a series of running battles between security forces and terrorist groups of Islamists, which it claims are being backed by neighbouring states, among them Saudi Arabia and Israel. Tarif said there was no evidence that either funds or weapons were flowing into Syria. He said security forces were facing sustained armed resistance in the city of Homms only, with most other parts of the restive country under the control of the military. “Assad made a mistake in 2001 when he gave out weapons to people as part of a Golan Heights [protection] force,” he said. “It’s these weapons that are being used now and a lot of them appear to have made their way to Homms. It is the one place that people are shooting back.” Meanwhile, the former attorney general of Hama, Adnan Mohammed al-Bakkour, on Thursdayappeared on a video released on the internet, in which he rebuffed regime claims that he had been forced to make an earlier video resigning from his post and denouncing the ongoing crackdown. In the short video Bakkour reaffirmed his earlier insistence that he had defected to the opposition – the most senior non-military official to do so since the uprisings began. International groups believe more than 2,600 people have been killed in the crackdowns. Between 400 and 600 members of the security forces have also been killed, although observers believe that large numbers of them have been defectors killed by loyalist units. Gunfire resounded through part of the Syrian capital, Damascus, where the local co-ordinating committees, which act as an umbrella group for the opposition, say up to five people were killed. Security has been intense in Damascus – the political heart of the Allawite clan, which is led by the Assad family – and demonstrations have not achieved the same size or reach there. Several Syrian families were reported to have been forced to make declarations that “armed gangs” had killed their sons during recent fighting. Syria Middle East Turkey Europe Martin Chulov guardian.co.uk

Posted by on September 15, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.