Law enforcement in Syria
[7] Police history in Syria dates back to the French Mandate, when General Pierre Rondot[8] established a Gendarmerie in order to maintain law and order in rural areas; led by General Wahid Bey, it was poorly armed, organized, disciplined and equipped and did not prove very effective against rebel forces, despite several attempts to ameliorate at least discipline and morale.
[14] On the wake of 1946, the Syrian Gendarmerie was considered the only reliable and effective support of the Government; it was purged and, once equipped by the United Kingdom with modern weaponry, it was successfully deployed to quell a revolt[14] of Alawi religious leader Salman al-Murshid.
[9] In late 1940s, the national police force, grown out of the Gendarmerie, was deemed understaffed and poorly disciplined, with several cases of corruption among its ranks.
[19] According to CIA records, two Nazi officials, Alois Brunner and Franz Rademacher, as soon as 1957 were granted asylum in Syria and advised Syrian police until the early next decade.
[19] As of late 1950s, Syrian non-military internal security forces totalled about 5,000 personnel, including a National Gendarmérie of 2,800, a Desert Patrol of 400 and 1,800 uniformed police,[20] under the authority of the Ministry of Interior.
[26] Back to the regained independence in 1961, Adnan Quwatli, a professor of Law linked to business community,[27] was appointed Interior Minister;[28] on 15 December 1961 Colonel Muhammad Hisham al-Samman was appointed Commander of Internal Security Forces, assisted by a Committee under his presidency and including the Directors-General of Police and Public Security and six provincial superintendents.
[29] The Kuzbari government pledged to establish political liberties and to disestablish emergency laws;[27] despite this, the civil police forces are believed to have been used extensively to combat internal security threats to the government, including pro-Nasserites[30] Baathists and other secular socialists (opposed to the business-Islamist alliance),[27] especially in the universities, which were subjected to several forms of control;[27] also trade unions were harshly confronted by the police in 1962.
[13] During the relative political stability of the 1970s and 1980s, police and security services were credited with having grown and become professional; however, they remained highly secretive, and in 1987 only the bare outlines of their institutional makeup were known.
[35] According to Alasdair Drysdale, the Hafiz al-Asad's rule was characterized by a marked increase of the Alawite presence in key posts in the officer corps, in the internal security forces and in the Ba'ath Party,[31] possibly also due to the Islamist unrest.
[36] During the unrest caused by the Muslim Brotherhood in 1976, the Internal Security Forces were heavily employed in the northern-central region, in Aleppo, Hama and Homs.
[37] During 1970s, Ali Haydar's Special Forces formed a key part of the Syrian government's security apparatus; they participated to the quelling of the Islamist uprising in Jisr al-Shughur in March 1980[38][35] and in Hama in February 1982.
The Police was subdivided into four main services: Administration, Criminal Investigations, Public Order and Traffic departments which also dealt with internal security matters.
[47] According to American professor Joshua Landis, the Internal Security Forces in mid-2000s altered their own ethnic/religious composition, under the guidance of then-Minister of Interior Ghazi Kanaan.
[41] During the same period the Syrian police confronted also against Kurds and dealt with Kurdish demonstrations;[52] clashes and shoot-outs were a not so uncommon occurrence throughout the decade.
[55]: 874 Alongside the Public Security Police, whose headquarters maintained the subdivision into the four main branches, two paramilitary forces operated: the Gendarmerie and the Desert Guard.
[citation needed] According to government lists presented to and published by the UN's Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, in 2011 the death toll for Syrian police forces was 478.
[66] Following the deepening of the civil war, police forces have been established also by insurgent factions, as well as by Rojava Kurdish-held region[3] and, on 24 January 2017, a Syrian security force was established by Turkey in Turkey-controlled Syrian border town Jarablus; a video reportedly showing ranks and files of armed men chanting Islamist and pro-Turkey slogans was released on YouTube.
[55]: 875 [13] In 2008, President Bashar al-Assad issued a law that mandates that only the General Command of the Army and Armed Forces may issue an arrest warrant in the case of a crime committed by a military officer, member of the internal security forces, or customs police officer in the pursuit of his normal duties, and that such cases must be tried in military courts.
According to the accusations, the authorities use the Emergency Law to detain persons critical of the government and charge them with a wide range of political crimes, including treason.
A shortage of available courts and lack of legal provisions for a speedy trial or plea bargaining led to lengthy pretrial detentions.
Individuals who suffered torture or beatings while detained refused to allow their names or details of their cases to be reported for fear of government reprisal.
[13] Former prisoners, detainees, and reputable local human rights groups report that methods of torture and abuse included electrical shocks; pulling out fingernails; burning genitalia; forcing objects into the rectum; beatings while the victim is suspended from the ceiling and on the soles of the feet; alternately dousing victims with freezing water and beating them in extremely cold rooms; hyper-extending the spine; bending the body into the frame of a wheel and whipping exposed body parts; using a backward-bending chair to asphyxiate the victim or fracture the spine; and stripping prisoners naked for public view.
AI reported that torture was most likely to occur while detainees were held at one of the many detention centres operated by the various security services in the country, particularly while authorities attempted to extract a confession or information.
[13] Between the end of 2012 and 2017, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) maintained a local police force in parts of the Raqqa and Aleppo governorates that it controlled.
[74] Inside its detention centers ISIL held common criminals who have been sentenced by its judicial branch, but it also detains political opponents, activists, and even children as young as eight years old.
On 28 April 2014, an activist movement in Raqqa city publicized a protest by women demanding to know the fate of their male family members, who had been detained by ISIL for some time.
[82] The FSP was said to be underequipped and underarmed; according to British foreign secretary Philip Hammond, the United Kingdom from 2014[83] to 2017[84] worked with international donors to provide the Free Syrian Police training, technical assistance, maintenance funds, and basic equipment.
[88] According to Syrian Opposition website Zaman al-Wasl, Brigadier Adeeb al-Shalaf, chief of police in rebel-held areas of the Aleppo Governorate, announced in July 2017 the start of recruitment of women, in order to deal with the female inspection activities.
[89] An investigation by the BBC program Panorama in 2017 found the Free Syrian Police to be involved in recurring human rights abuses, including executions by stoning, and collaboration with extremists such as the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement.
[90] The resumption of funding without an independent investigation was decried by Kate Osamor, shadow secretary for international development, and other aid experts.
