A Syrian court sentenced Abdul Jabbar Ghazi Arziq to life imprisonment after convicting him of joining an armed group affiliated with Liwa al-Quds, aka Jerusalem Brigades, a predominantly Palestinian militia that supported the Assad regime and has been linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Syrian state media reported on Wednesday.
Jerusalem Brigades members were largely recruited from the Bab an-Nayrab Palestinian Refugee Camp, east of Aleppo. According to the think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the group has light arms, mortars, and short-range rockets, as well as close connections to both the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the IRGC.
In April 2023, Jerusalem Brigades claimed responsibility for the multiple rockets launched from Syrian territory toward the southern part of the Golan Heights, targeting the Israeli towns of Netur and Avni Eitan, according to the Hezbollah-affiliated Al Mayadeen network in Lebanon.
The courts found that the group had aimed to incite civil war, promote sectarian violence, and seize cities, classifying the acts as war crimes and crimes against humanity, given the human rights abuses of the Assad regime.
Life sentence due to gravity of acts, threat to civilians, lawyer says
Lawyer Radif Mustafa, director of the Accountability and Justice Department at the National Commission for Transitional Justice, told the Syrian Arab News Agency [SANA] on Wednesday that the gravity of the acts and the threat they posed to civilians and social peace were among the considerations underpinning Azriq’s life sentence.
The court rejected the defendant’s claim for mitigating circumstances and ruled that he would not be eligible for a general or a special amnesty in the future.
Mustafa told SANA that the ruling confirmed that political changes or changing circumstances would not erase crimes, adding that more will be done to ensure victims of the Assad regime receive justice.