On January 18, a critic of the Syrian regime was killed in a brutal attack in Hamburg. Mohamed Joune was a pharmacist and long-time resident in Germany who ran a non-profit group that provided aid to victims of the war in Syria. He was also a vocal critic of the Damascus regime and it was that, his friends suspect, that led to him being targeted, with the attacker reportedly striking him multiple times in the head with an axe.
Every time an anti-Assad activist is killed or attacked abroad, it sparks fear in the diaspora that the regime is seeking to silence its critics overseas. Those fears are not unfounded: the regime and its supporters have a long history of gruesome attacks on those who oppose them. Yet, many of the highest profile crimes against anti-Assad foreign dissidents in the past few years have turned out to have other causes.
So far, little evidence suggests that the Assad regime is concerned with murdering critics abroad. It is too busy killing them at home.
Critics of the regime have certainly found themselves victims of gruesome attacks. In 2015, Abdul Hadi Arwani, a Syrian imam and critic of the regime, was found dead in his car in London. He had been sprayed with bullets from a machine gun. Reports immediately focused on his opposition to the regime. But a year later, two men were jailed for his murder, and in court it emerged that they were involved in a long-running dispute with Arwani over ownership of a cultural center in London.
Something similar happened in 2017, when prominent Syrian opposition activist Orouba Barakat and her 22-year-old daughter, Halla, were found stabbed to death in Istanbul. Because both were activists – Orouba was investigating torture in Syrian prisons while her daughter Halla was a journalist at an opposition website – their killings gained international coverage, and activists in Turkey, with more than three million Syrian refugees, were legitimately fearful for their lives. The civil war in Syria was turning in the regime’s favor and there was real concern that Damascus was now setting its sights on the opposition next door.
But the following year, a distant relative of the pair confessed to their killing and was sentenced to life in jail. Turkish media reported that he had attacked them because of a financial dispute.
Thus, if the murder of Joune in Germany is traced to the regime, it would mark a significant escalation. It would not, however, be unusual. For years, indeed decades, the regime has murdered beyond its borders, mainly in Lebanon, either directly or through allies within the security establishment or groups like Hezbollah.
The most notorious of these assassinations remains the killing of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, a devastating event in 2005 that eventually pushed out the Syrian military from the country. But there have been many others: journalists, politicians and intelligence officials have all been assassinated on Lebanese territory and the finger pointed at Syria.
Certainly, the regime’s extensive intelligence network could probably reach dissidents in Turkey and even in Europe. But attacking dissidents in Turkey does not appear to be a priority. Attacking those in Europe may simply bring unwanted attention to the regime at a moment when Western powers have accepted the regime’s survival.
For now, the regime appears to be more concerned with murdering critics at home than worrying about dissidents in Europe. Since last summer, it has started publishing records of some of the thousands of men and women who have died in Syrian jails over the course of the uprising. These “death notices” merely list the name and the date they died, but the families of many say the dates correspond to when the deceased were in custody. In many cases, the deaths took place years ago, shocking relatives who believed their loved ones were still in jail, but alive.
The regime appears to be preparing for life beyond the civil war, as the fighting begins to be quelled. The death notices give families administrative closure, allowing them to sell property or access bank accounts.
At the same time, though, the regime also appears to be stepping up executions. Military judges have reportedly accelerated the pace of death sentences over the past year, and satellite images show significant expansion of cemeteries near prisons. All of which suggests the regime is seeking to turn a page on the revolution by getting rid of its most troublesome prisoners. As there are an estimated 100,000 detainees, that could mean thousands already killed through summary executions.
The death of a Syrian critic in exile in Germany may ultimately be traced to the regime. If it does, it will be a brutal new escalation. But for now, the regime appears to have no need to export its killing machine abroad, while it finishes its gruesome work at home.
Faisal Al Yafai is currently writing a book on the Middle East and is a frequent commentator on international TV news networks. He has worked for news outlets such as The Guardian and the BBC, and reported on the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa.
AFP PHOTO/DELIL SOULEIMAN
