Syria executes 24 people for setting fires in “terrorist acts”

A total of 24 people have been executed in Syria after being sentenced for carrying out “terrorist acts” through “the use of incendiary materials” that caused human losses and material damage, the Syrian Ministry of Justice reported on Thursday.

The department indicated in its official pages that the executions were carried out on Wednesday and that those sentenced had caused fires, which caused human losses and damage to state infrastructure as well as public and private properties.

The sentence for which those 24 people were convicted, to whom the antiterrorist law was applied, was ratified by a court of cassation and when it was handed down included life sentences with forced labor for another eleven accused of setting fires in public and private facilities. agricultural land and forests.

Four other people were also sentenced to forced labor and five minors to prison terms of between 10 and 12 years for participating in this type of crime.

At the end of last year, the Ministry of the Interior arrested those allegedly responsible for several fires in the western provinces of Latakia, Tartus and Homs, and others involved in them and assured that they had confessed to starting the fires.

In total, 187 fires broke out in those three provinces last year, affecting 280 towns and cities, consuming 13,000 hectares of crops, 11,000 hectares of forests and damaging 370 homes, according to Syrian authorities.

In addition, they damaged various agricultural and livestock equipment and infrastructure related to the electricity grid, water supply, sewerage and telephone service, with direct losses to farmers estimated at some 8.5 million dollars.

Syria has been the scene of an armed conflict since 2011 and, in the context of tensions between the warring parties, there have been cross accusations of fires, sometimes attributed to the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group.

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