Officials from the Assad regime have allegedly colluded to destabilize the new Syrian administration, according to recordings obtained by Al Jazeera, published on Wednesday, which suggests the former regime believes it is working in coordination with Israel.
A hacker built a relationship with the former officials by identifying himself as a Mossad agent. A former Assad brigadier-general for the elite Quwwat al-Nimr unit, Suheil al-Hassan, is among those allegedly implicated in the recording.
In the recordings, a source can be heard saying, “The State of Israel, with all its capabilities, will stand with you.”
A voice, alleged to belong to Hassan, can be heard continuing, “There is a level higher than me – Mr. Rami is the one who coordinates… And I have dangerous intelligence information.”
“Our prayers for you all are that this foolishness, this evil, and this blackness called ‘the flood’ ends,” Hassan allegedly added. “May God’s curse be upon them… Finish them off and purify them…”
Despite seemingly condemning Hamas’s al-Aqsa Flood (the October 7 massacre), the Assad regime restored ties with Hamas in 2022 and was considered part of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance.”
Ghiath Dalla, a former brigadier-general in Assad’s forces, is also allegedly implicated in the recordings.
Full recording set to release in January
Al Jazeera promised the entire recording would be released in January and would include more than 74 hours of leaked audio recordings and hundreds of pages of documents obtained in the investigation.
The Al Jazeera report comes less than a week after The New York Times reported that Hassan was among two main former officials involved in destabilization efforts of the new Syrian administration.
Alleging he had returned to Syria from Russian exile multiple times over the past year to capitalize on the Alawite unrest, NYT claimed that Hassan distributed funds, recruited fighters, and procured weapons during his travels in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq.
Syrian authorities imposed a curfew on the Alawites on Tuesday after nights of consecutive protests.
The Alawite community has been targeted since the fall of Assad over a perceived connection to the former regime, as Assad belonged to the Shi’ite-following sect.
More than 1,000 Alawites were killed in March by regime-affiliated groups, and an attack on an Alawite mosque last week saw eight people killed near Homs.
Syrian state media reported earlier in the week that they had detained 12 people with ties to efforts to destabilize the regime, including those with ties to the former special forces commander.
On Sunday, the Syrian Interior Ministry also claimed to have arrested “a cell of the so-called terrorist ‘Knights’ Squadrons’ affiliated with the criminal Suhail al-Hassan in the Jableh countryside.
“Let the remnants of the defunct regime and its criminal gangs, who insist on continuing their approach of tampering, spreading chaos, killing, and sabotage, await their inevitable fate.
“Let this message serve as a final warning to them to stop what they are doing,” Syria’s Intelligence Minister Annas Khatab wrote, seemingly addressing the recent reports.