Murder and rape in Syria’s Damascus: two crimes shake public opinion and lead to calls for execution
DAMASCUS, Syria (North Press) – Anger and shock were the general atmosphere in Syria after two separate crimes occurred last week in Babila district, near Damascus, amid calls by activist on social media to execute the perpetrators.
On Friday, a young man slaughtered his sister with a knife after raping her, then attempted to escape Damascus before being arrested.
Police in the town of Husayniyyah in Rif-Dimashq received a notification that a dead girl in her early thirties was found in one of the town’s houses, according to a statement by the Syrian Ministry of the Interior.
In his testimony, the victim's father stated that his son Mahmoud escorted his sister to the room, and after hearing screaming and distress, he entered the room and found his daughter covered in blood. His son confessed to killing her and then fled.
However, after his arrest, the perpetrator admitted that he had raped and slaughtered his sister in agreement with the father on the pretext that his sister had a bad reputation. Investigations are still ongoing, according to Syrian government authorities.
Another crime took place in Rif-Dimashq when two people allegedly raped and killed a mother and her three children after attempting to murder the father.
On Tuesday, Muhammad Omar Mustafa and Muhammad Marzouq visited the home of the victim, Yasser Al-Saab, on the pretext of making some repairs to the sanitary installations there. They then shoved him and stabbed him in the back, intending to steal from him.
Yasser, who survived the incident, said in a statement to Watan newspaper from Mujtahid Hospital that “after stabbing me several times…I lost all of my blood while they were drinking the coffee that we prepared for them, after that one of them went to my wife’s room and tore her clothes in an attempt to rape her…then he killed her.”
When the three children of Yasser, four-year-old Abdulrahman, nine-year-old Haifa, and eleven-year-old Bashar, woke up to the screams of the mother, the criminals killed them, according to the father’s testimony.
“They hanged one of my children in front of my eyes,” the father added.
The case sparked public outcry, and social media soon swirled with calls to execute the perpetrators. Some activists called for its implementation in central Damascus.
Some questioned the credibility of the judiciary in Syria, considering it steeped in corruption and cronyism, and believing that the perpetrators will escape justice if they bribe the judges.
Lawyer Sulaf Naji told North Press that, “the two crimes have become public cases, and it is very likely that the perpetrators will be sentenced to death, but in the Beit Sahem case, it requires the approval of the President of the Republic and the Minister of Defense because one of the perpetrators is connected to the military.”
Naji ruled out the execution of the sentence in a public place due to the different mechanisms for implementing the ruling between the civil and military courts, in addition to that the Syrian judiciary rarely follow such methods of implementing death sentences.
Experts attribute the increasing crime rates in Syrian government controlled-areas to both the living conditions and the spread of drugs, in addition to the weakness of the means of accountability in light of what they consider corruption in the Syrian judiciary.
(Reporting by Waheed Attar, edited by Lucas Chapman)