Air Security, Aleppo

The Air Security Branch is located at the end of the Nile Street, near the intersection with the Northern Ring Road, in an area characterised by modern and beautiful buildings in Aleppo where most professors at Aleppo University and senior businessmen live.

This site was established shortly after 2011, around the time when demonstrations against the repressive regime began. It was previously located in the Faid neighbourhood, near the building for the non-commissioned officers’ club.

Heads of this branch have strong, individual and special relations with the Republican Palace because it is assigned experimental tasks carried out against Syrian citizens.

We all recall the events when Aleppine and Damascine ladies were forced to remove their hijabs in public. It was this branch in Aleppo and its counterpart in Damascus that managed the event while conveying its repercussions to the Republican Palace minute by minute, in order to assess the Syrians’ reaction to such an act.

Like the other branches, this branch is known for the severity of torture and considerable amount of arbitrary arrests committed against the Syrian citizens.

This branch sometimes has the power to compete with some of the decisions made by officers at the Republican Palace with the consent of the presidency. For example, the Presidential Palace in Damascus issued four release warrants authorising the release of the Damascine detainee, Brigadier General Jamil Akkam, who was detained by the Air Force Intelligence. For four consecutive times, the branch complied with the warrants and released the detainee in question, only to arrest him immediately once he was on the street in front of the building. In conclusion, the branch simply did not receive any remarks form the Republican Palace.

Unlike its counterparts, this branch is distinguished by its unique approach to dealing with those whose sentences come to an end. In practice, when a detainee has served and finished their sentence in prison—noting that the sentences issued by the field court are among the toughest, most severe and unjust sentences on earth—they are moved to solitary confinement and remanded in custody pending a presidential pardon that might take another 5 or 10 years to be issued, like what thousands of Syrian young people have experienced. Following the events of 2011 and amidst all the momentum they caused, this branch played a gruesome role in the arrest of thousands of people, executing many of them and then throwing their bodies into mass graves that almost every Aleppine knows about. The majority of those corpses were then either burnt or dissolved, while many others remain unaccounted for to this day. On its part, the branch has denied any connection with the victims in the first place.