Ammar Johmani learned that 31 prisoners were released on Monday from al-Suwayda prison to fight alongside Assad forces in a deal the regime held with criminals accepting to fight in return for their release.
A well-informed source said the group released is the first batch out of about 400 who may join them later, noting that those released went to the al-Dareej area in the countryside of Damascus to attend a military training for 15 days in preparation for airlift to Qamishli airport in order to join the forces of the Republican Guards in Deir al-Zour, one of the hottest fronts ISIS.
The source added that security officials and army officers repeated their visit on Monday to Al-Suwayda and assured the criminals to be released from prison to fight in return for an amnesty from Bashar al-Assad personally, and that it is their duty to thank him and fight "armed gangs".
The Syrian Human Rights Network recently published a report describing the regime's deal with the prisoners to fight alongside it as "malicious," and reported that the police chief of the regime in the province of Suwayda, Major General Farouk Omran, offered prisoners in the central Suwyada prison to join the army of the regime, local militias or even foreign militias, mainly Iranian and Iraqi, in a first step to take subsequent action to release the names selected by the prison leadership.
The source mentioned the prisoners will fight within regime ranks in Deir al-Zour headed by Brigadier General Essam Zahr al-Din one of the Republican Guards leaders.
The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, revealed that the prisoners were sentenced after they were convicted of murder, theft, robbery of violence, drug trafficking and trafficking.
The proposition made by regime police chief of the regime and leader of the Republican Guards, according to the source, was quickly accepted by criminals, most of whom came from loyal areas and famous families in the coastal villages, some of whom had been imprisoned for 15 years after being convicted of murder and looting.
He pointed out that among them are elements of the customs administration who has been serving their sentences in the prison of Suwayda for a long time in what is known in Syria as Hassan Makhlouf case, the former customs director.
Another source told Ammar Johmani that some of the prisoners accepted the conscription because they saw it as opportunity to leave prison and perhaps to escape regime forces later as one prisoner did escaping to Turkey, according to the source.
The source said the regime after successfully recruiting criminals from its civilian prisons, is trying to lure some groups of political prisoners and those who are called locally in prisons as "riot prisoners", especially those who were recently arrested at checkpoints after they left Aleppo following brokered agreement with Russia and the opposition, or some political detainees who have no personal claim in addition to the public prosecution against them.
The source denied that among these prisoners are any political prisoners who are sentenced by the Military Field Court or the Terrorism Court.
The Syrian Network report attributed the recruitment of these criminals to the enormous shortage in the human reservoir suffered by the regime and its allies, especially as it raised the age of reserve request to return and service in the army to 40, which prompted most of those who are asked again for recruitment to hide or leave Syria in a new form of forced displacement.
Assad regime has used the recruitment of precedents and criminals in the ranks of its forces and militias since the beginning of the Syrian revolution to confront the demonstrators, before forcing the demonstrators and drag them to take up arms.
Brigadier Nabil al-Ghagri, director of the prison administration and director of the Adra prison in Damascus, and officers of the Republican Guard, recruited about 700 of prisoners in several batches and brought them to the fighting fronts, especially to Deir al-Zour, where the fiercest battles take place between regime and ISIS
