Assad regime forces have released Muhammad al-Darawsheh, the father of a child with cancer, following public pressure and attacks by armed groups on six regime checkpoints throughout Daraa province.
The Ahrar Houran local activist group reported that the Air Force Intelligence branch freed al-Darawsheh in Daraa on Sunday afternoon, after a week-long detention. This release came two days after he was transferred from Damascus to the Air Force Intelligence branch in Daraa.
Regime forces arrested al-Darawsheh on November 2 at a checkpoint south of Damascus while he was traveling to visit his only son, Ali, who is battling leukemia and receiving treatment at a hospital in Damascus.
According to Ahrar Houran, al-Darawsheh’s release came after public pressure intensified over the past two days, following armed attacks on six military checkpoints affiliated with Air Force Intelligence across Daraa province, in addition to an attack on the State Security Center in Inkhil, north of Daraa.
Mohammad Qaddah, a member of the political committee of the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC), said that the Assad regime “understands only the language of force.” He added that attacking regime military and security checkpoints, as well as abducting regime officers, has become the local community’s chosen strategy to compel the regime to release detainees, given the ongoing arbitrary arrests, torture, enforced disappearances, and ransom demands for their release.
Qaddah affirmed that this approach has been adopted by the local community in the Daraa and Suwaida provinces to secure the release of their detained or kidnapped relatives held by the regime and its allied militias. This response has also deterred regime forces from continuing to detain civilians only to release them later for large ransoms.
Arbitrary arrests of civilians, particularly at military checkpoints on the Damascus-Daraa international highway, have become a common occurrence.
(Source: SOC’s Media Department)
