The Criminal Investigation directorate in coastal Tartus city has arrested a female member of an abduction gang connected to security officers in Latakia and Tartus, where many people were victims of its crimes.
The security forces and criminal section in Tartus and Latakia had ignored many cases of abduction over two months until a son of an prominent figure in Tartus was abducted, which encouraged them to act and arrested a girl called Julia Tony al-Shayeb, 26 years from Aleppo, who was arrested in her way to Latakia on a public vehicle at a barrier was installed for that purpose.
Activist Mustafa al-Banyasi managed to contact one of the officials in the Criminal security in Tartus who said that the gang consisted of many men from Latakia and Tartus, one of them from the family of Makhlouf, Bashar al-Assad’s mother’s family. The official detailed that the gang used a 4-wheel-drive car without a plate number owned by one of al-Assad’s family.
According to the official, the girl confessed of her connection to abducting many men, civilians and military members, cooperating with the rest of the gang’s members. She used to create fake facebook accounts and contact particular people identified by other members of the gang with help of security members, who were usually known to be rich and able to pay ransom. The girl used to date victims in public place then move to private place where they got abducted by the rest of the gang’s members, and taken to a villa in the area between Drikish and the village of Hamin or other villa at the route of Fidio village in the countryside of Jableh.
The official said that the girl had revealed to connection of a highly ranked officer in the Branch of Military Security in Latakia,, whose job was identifying names of targeted victims and the he received half of the ransom amount, justifying that he protect the girl and the rest of the gang members.
The girl had participated in 14 cases of abduction, all of them were successful and the ransom was paid, usually mediated by a member of the military security.
Al-Banyasi reported that the General Prosecutor has extended the investigation till they obtain more information.
Exposing the case to public has been faced with many different reactions and queries about the connection between the security bodies and gangs of abduction, looting and killing which have taken place for a long period, and query about the aim of the security forces from spreading fear and feeling of insecurity among people.
Lawyer Alaa in his talk to Zaman al-Wasl expressed his worries about putting pressure to close investigations in abduction and crimes of killing, or just going through shallow investigation and keeping the identity of bodies aim to spread fear among people secret.
The Lawyer confirmed that the goal of spreading chaos and the feeling of insecurity among people in the coastal area is to keep people under the feeling of threat from the so called “terrorists gangs”, and push them to join the regime’s forces and its militias.
Many regime-loyal facebook pages considered the girl as one of ISIS’s members, or she was a member of sleeping Terrorist cells, although all the gang’s member were Alawite and the girl is Christian
