The Man Who Stormed Jilani Mosque
A brief look at the crimes of a Military Intelligence officer in Homs
On July 25, 2011, members of the regime's Military Intelligence invaded al-Jilani Mosque in Baba Amr, Homs and filmed themselves detaining and beating the Imam, Sheikh Muhammad Mustafa. The video of the beating was then leaked, with many claiming the videographer was a regime intelligence officer who intentionally leaked the video in order to inflame sectarian tensions in the city. Years later, pro-regime Facebook pages would admit that the man behind the raid was the Military Intelligence Captain Ibrahim Muhammad Issa. This would not be Issa’s last involvement in the regime’s atrocities in Homs.
Just a few days before the mosque operation, the regime’s Central Crisis Management Cell had issued new directives to security forces in Homs. According to documents published by the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, the CCMC ordered a increase in raids throughout the city in order to find and detained “wanted persons” and to prevent the continuation of weekly protests.
Captain Issa was one of the men assigned this job. Born in an Alawite town outside Qardaha, Issa had served in the Air Force Intelligence for many years. When the popular protests began across Syria, Issa “proved his worth in the field” and was assigned to undergo a specialized training program in “street fighting”. He was then transferred to the Military Intelligence Directorate and assigned to Homs City, where security forces had began a brutal crackdown on protestors that March.
The regime crackdown triggered the formation of armed opposition groups, first to protect protestors then to attack regime forces and create free zones in the city. One of these men was Bilal Al-Kin, whose life was recently documented by Zaman al-Wasl. Al-Kin had first clashed with security forces on March 25, 2011, when shabiha began storming homes and kidnapping civilians in the Jourat Al-Shayh neighborhood. In April, he stood guard during Homs’ great sit-in. By August, al-Kin had helped form the FSA-affiliated Khalid bin Al-Walid Battalion operating within the city. A month later, regime forces launched a large military operation in the old city of Homs. Opposition forces withdrew after days of heavy fighting, but in the chaos al-Kin was killed.
In early 2012 the 104th Republican Guard Brigade deployed additional units to Homs City, led by the infamous war criminal Ali Khuzam. Khuzam had already overseen the suppression of protestors and insurgents in East Ghouta and southern Damascus in 2011. He then turned to Homs to help lead the brutal offensive against opposition-controlled neighborhoods. From February to April, 2012, regime forces would indiscriminately shell anti-regime neighborhoods with tanks and artillery while ground forces conducted mass executions of civilians, all in an attempt to drive entire populations from their neighborhoods.
Over the next year, Ibrahim Issa and his Military Intelligence colleagues would assist in these military operations, first in the Khalidiya and Bab Amr neighborhoods, then in the Qusayr and Talkalakh regions, and going as far north as Jisr Shoughur in the Idlib countryside. In early 2013 Issa returned to Homs City as the regime prepared for a renewed offensive against the remaining opposition neighborhoods. He was killed alongside four other soldiers on March 10, 2013 as security forces again stormed Baba Amr.
A posthumous biography of Issa shared widely by pro-regime Facebook pages in 2015 explicitly links the officer to all of these events. He was “the leader of the Jilani Mosque operation” in July 2011, claimed to be the man responsible for killing al-Kin in September, and is described as “the right-hand man” of Ali Khuzam. His biography underscores the central role of the regime’s intelligence services not just in monitoring, detaining and torturing Syrian in the detention system, but also as central combatants in military operations throughout the war.
