The Syrian regime started to apply the compromise agreed with the citizens besieged inside Old Homs in March 2014.
The Syrian Human Rights Network has documented around 1000-1100 compromises between the Syrian regime on one hand and peaceful activists and fighters from several fronts came to fight in Homs and defected soldiers on the other.
The compromises were reached without an agent or a third party, and they were mostly through individuals who previously arranged compromises with representatives of the Syrian regime.
The Network distinguishes between two compromises:
The first allowed men aged 17-50, women and children who haven’t participated in any revolutionary or humanitarian activities to get out of Old Homs.
The second are individual compromises which included allowing the peaceful media activists and humanitarian activists and fighters to surrender to representatives of the Syrian regime, according to the guarantees provided by the Syrian regime. The compromise included the following points:
– Releasing them immediately after settling down their situations
– Never attacking them or their children
– Allowing them to go back to their lives before the revolution.
After the people surrendered to the representatives of the regime, they were detained in the Andalus school in Dablan neighborhood for three months, then the regime released the detainees of the first category. But not less than 730 journalists, defected soldiers and other civilians were moved to an location, among them the prominent media figure and the director of Bab as-Sibaa Media Office, Khaled at-Tellawi, Al-Jazeera reporter, Ahmad Abbara, the famous peaceful activist, Tareq Brejawi and the media activist, Aamer Qarout.
The worst is that regime forces have killed many of them under torture, includinh Mounir Zada, a famous figure among the people of the area, and two brothers from Daghistani family living in Jorat ash-Shaiah.
Furthermore, the Syrian regime has collected all the defected soldiers and delivered them to the Military Security branch, while those who refused to complete military service were forced to recruit and participate in the military operations.
Yazan, one of the activists who left the besieged areas in Homs, told the Syrian Human Rights Network that "people were forced to conduct a compromise with the Syrian regime because no one could break the siege around them. After the representatives of the regime provided guarantees, some of the residents decided to surrender, but after a while, we realized that those guarantees were fake, a trap. I surrendered to the State Security branch, the officer investigated me and they wrote that I was holding a weapon, then they let me go. Four days later, they detained me again and led me to al-Andalus school where I met more than 1000 people."
"In the first days of detention, they treated us well, may be to win the trust of people in order to make them all surrender, because people would hear about the situation from the families who visit their detainees. After two months of detention, regime forces stopped all the visits, they prevented the detainees from going to the school yard. The Syrian regime kept none of its promises, as we heard that many detainees were transferred to security branches, and those who didn’t do the military service were obliged to join the army of Bashar Assad to kill their people later," he said.
Translated and edited by The Syrian Observer
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