Lebanese security source: Damascus arrested Maraj Oral in Lebanon... without Beirut’s knowledge

Listen to the article. The audio text is automated, generated by an automated system

The French news agency quoted a Lebanese security source as saying, on Friday, that Ali Kayali, who is accused of being responsible for the killing of hundreds in western Syria in 2013 during the conflict, and whose arrest Damascus announced on Thursday, was arrested from Lebanon without Beirut’s knowledge.

Kayali, also known as “Miraj Ural,” is, according to what the Syrian official news agency (SANA) reported on Thursday, “the main accused of committing” a massacre that claimed the lives of at least 250 people.

On Thursday, a Syrian security source told the French news agency that Kayali, who is of Turkish origin, “was arrested in Lebanon, during a security operation in coordination with the Lebanese side,” but a Lebanese security source gave a different story to the agency on Friday.

The Lebanese source, requesting that his name not be mentioned, said that “Turkish intelligence and Syrian intelligence kidnapped” Kayali from the Mansouriya area near Beirut, and “took him to the Syrian embassy (located northeast of the capital), and after that to Syria.”

He explained that the Lebanese authorities were not aware of the operation, and that Kayali had been residing in Lebanon since the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024.

For its part, the Turkish government agency Anatolia reported that the Turkish intelligence service coordinated with the Syrian side in searching for Oral and arresting him, but said that he was arrested in Syria, where he had been living “in hiding” since the fall of Assad, while trying to flee across the border.

SANA also reported, on Thursday, that Kayali was arrested “while trying to escape across the border,” without providing additional details.

Kayali fought alongside the former Syrian regime when he led a group called the “Syrian Resistance” and the “Popular Front for the Liberation of Iskenderun District,” and before that he was active in a leftist party banned in Türkiye.

He is accused of being behind the killing of 248 people by Syrian forces and groups loyal to them in Al-Bayda and Baniyas in 2013, according to the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, which classified it as one of “the bloodiest mass field executions since the beginning of the conflict in Syria.”

Kayali had fled to Syria from a prison in Turkey in 1982. Ankara accuses him of being one of the planners of two bombings that targeted the Reyhanli border area with Syria, killing 53 people in 2013, with the support of Syrian intelligence during the Assad era.

In early October, Turkey arrested a main suspect in this double attack called Omar al-Khatib, who is accused of being the coordinator of the operation between the perpetrators and former Syrian intelligence officials, according to official Turkish media.

The new leadership in Syria announces from time to time the arrest of military and security officials from the previous era, who were involved in committing atrocities and crimes against Syrians during the years of conflict.

It is suspected that many figures and officials associated with the previous era moved to Lebanon following the overthrow of Assad. In September, the authorities in Beirut arrested a relative of the ousted president, and the previous month, Damascus handed over an officer who served during the Assad era.