AR RAMTHA, Jordan – A man who said he is a former commander in Syria’s “Mukhabarat al-Askariya” military intelligence directorate, which operates under the direct authority of President Bashar Assad, claimed this week that the Assad regime has ordered its commanders to “shoot to kill five percent of the participants in any given demonstration.”
When the soldiers under his command, mostly Sunnis, refused to kill unarmed civilians at a demonstration outside Damascus, they themselves were slaughtered by the army and intelligence services, and dozens of them were killed, he said.
The “former commander,” who was interviewed by The Times of Israel on Tuesday in his hiding place across the Syrian border in northern Jordan, also said that Assad has been using Shiite fighters from Iran, Lebanon and Iraq in his attempt to quell demonstrations and fight back against opposition forces since the early days of the uprising against him.
marculyseas 