Lebanon investigates abduction of Syrian militia leader Ali Kayali and transfer to Syria

Mixed · 2Lebanese authorities are investigating how a former Syrian militia commander suspected of crimes under ousted President Bashar Assad was abducted in Lebanon and taken to Syria, judicial and security officials said on Friday 16 October. 1 2 Mixed · 2Syria's intelligence department said on Thursday that it had detained Ali Kayali, also known as Mihrac Ural, as he was trying to flee from Syria across the border. It said he was responsible for killings in 2013 in the coastal town of Baniyas that left hundreds of people dead. 1 2 Mixed · 2Lebanese judicial officials said the public prosecution had opened an investigation. Army intelligence and police intelligence units were asked to analyse telecommunication calls to establish whether Kayali was taken to the Syrian Embassy outside Beirut or straight to Syria after being picked up in the mountain town of Mansouriyeh, where he had been living. 1 2

Mixed · 2The three judicial and two security officials spoke anonymously because they were not authorised to talk to the media about a case still under investigation. A Syrian official did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the alleged kidnapping. 1 2 Mixed · 2A photo of a handcuffed, gray-haired Kayali standing between two Syrian flags surfaced on social media, and Lebanese authorities are checking whether it was taken at the Syrian Embassy. Syrian authorities separately released a photo of Kayali, born in 1956, in a prison uniform. 1 2 Mixed · 2Kayali, who was born in Turkey, was one of Syria's most wanted figures and news of his arrest prompted celebrations in parts of Syria, because he was blamed for sectarian killings during Assad's crackdown on the opposition in the early years of the conflict that began in March 2011. 1 2

Mixed · 2The reports say such kidnappings in Lebanon are not uncommon, citing the 2011 abduction of senior Baath Party official Shibli al-Aysami, aged 86, from Aley, for which Assad's authorities were blamed; he was never found. In August, Lebanese judicial authorities handed a former senior Syrian military officer under Assad to Damascus after questioning him. 1 2 Mixed · 2Dozens of officials have been tried in Syria since Assad's fall in December 2024; Assad's cousin Atef Najib was sentenced to death in August and Assad was sentenced in absentia. The conflict has left 500,000 people dead. 1 2