Assad-era minister turns himself in to new Syria authorities: statement

Assad-era minister turns himself in to new Syria authorities: statement

A former Syrian minister under ousted president Bashar al-Assad has turned himself in, the interior ministry said Tuesday, one of the highest-profile figures captured by the new authorities.

Assad-era minister turns himself in to new Syria authorities: statement

"The minister of interior in the government of the defunct regime, Mohammed al-Shaar, surrendered himself to the General Security Department," an interior ministry statement said.

Shaar, the target of US and EU sanctions, had been interior minister from 2011 to 2018 at the height of Syria's 13-year war.

The security forces of the new Syrian authorities, which toppled the Assad government late last year, had been looking for Shaar and "raided sites where he had been hiding in the past few days", according to the interior ministry.

Since 2011, Shaar has been under European Union sanctions for involvement in "violence against demonstrators" that took to the streets demanding democracy that year.

The government's repression of the peaceful protests sparked a complex civil war that has killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions.

Shaar was also among top officials including Assad who were slapped with US sanctions in 2011 "to increase pressure on the Government of Syria to end its use of violence against its people and begin transitioning to a democratic system that protects the rights of the Syrian people", according to the US Treasury.

In 2012, a Lebanese lawyer had filed a lawsuit against Shaar, accusing him of having ordered hundreds of killings in Tripoli in 1986 when he was in charge of security in the port city of northern Lebanon.

Also in 2012, he sustained light wounds to the shoulder after a deadly suicide bomb attack on the ministry, a Syrian security source had told AFP at the time on condition of anonymity.

That attack was claimed by Al-Nusra Front, the jihadist precursor of the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group that led the rebel offensive that toppled Assad on December 8.

Assad himself has fled to Russia, an ally of his defunct government, and some former officials in his administration are believed to have left Syria too.

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