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| Closeups of Mihraç Ural aka Ali at-Kayyali and a file photo of him with Abullah Ocalan |
A fugitive Turkish Alevi with Syrian citizenship and
a checkered past has emerged as the chief instigator and overseer of last
week’s massacres in Bayda and Banias.
A native of Hatay
Province in southern Turkey, his real name is Mihraç Ural.
In Syria, where he
commands the “National Resistance” militia, a shabiha subdivision, Mihraç Ural goes
by his Arabic nom de guerre: Ali at-Kayyali.
On the day that Mihraç
Ural aka Ali at-Kayyali made the headlines for saying
in a leaked video, “We need to cleanse Banias of traitors at
the earliest,” a Syrian Sunni Muslim survivor gave on air his grisly
nine-minute eyewitness account of last week’s massacre in the coastal city.
Details of the human
carnage in western Syria over the weekend, in which pro-regime militias
slaughtered hundreds of Sunni residents, most of them women and children, point
to a deliberate act of sectarian cleansing in the Alawites' heartland.
The London-based Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights said possibly as many as 100 Sunnis were killed
Thursday in Bayda, a village outside the city of Banias.
It cited witnesses who
said some of the dead were killed with knives or blunt objects and that dozens
of villagers were still missing.
Pro-regime militiamen
stormed the Sunni neighborhood of Ras el-Nabeh the following day, Friday (May
3), killing hundreds more.
Ural aka Kayyali is
believed to have commanded the militiamen.
Sitting next to an
Alawite religious leader and speaking to supporters with impeccable Syrian
accent shortly before the outrage, he says on video:
“Banias?
The only exit route for those traitors is the (Mediterranean) sea. We are
Banias!
“In
any case, Jableh (a nearby coastal city) is under nationalist forces control.
It cannot possibly be a base or pathway for our foes.
“Sooner
or later, we’re supposed to lay siege to Banias. I mean what I say: cordon off
Banias and start the ethnic cleansing.
“Our
mission is to liberate, cleanse and hold our ground until (regular army) troops
take over.”
Ural
left Turkey for Syria after the 12 September 1980 Turkish coup d'état, headed by Gen. Kenan Evren.
He
is said to have introduced PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan to
Hafez Assad, Bashar’s father, in Damascus.
A
photograph showing him with Ocalan is still posted on Ural’s Facebook page.
Ural
has previously recorded videos in staunch support of the Syrian regime,
including one uploaded
in January in which he threatens “traitors” against “descending on Latakia and
the coast,” in reference to rebels fighting against regime troops in the chiefly
Alawite areas of western Syria.
Having
led the Turkish Peoples Liberation Party/Front (THKP/C) and its deadly splinter
faction called the Hasty Ones (Acilciler), a leftist group established in the
1970s, Ural is also remembered in Turkey as the instigator of an
anti-government march in Hatay last September.
Hatay
has a population of 500,000 Alevis.
Eyewitness account
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| Top, Banias eyewitness and Alarabiya's Nadine Khammash |
To
protect his identity, Ms Khammash introduced him in yesterday’s Evening News as
“Abu Muhammad.” And he answered her questions from a darkened room in Lebanon.
Here
is the gist of what he said:
(In
the days leading up to the massacre) there was nothing untowardly going on (in
Banias). People were moving around easily and without worry.
Yes,
there were checkpoints but no one was being stopped.
Checkpoints
did not proliferate until Wednesday (May 1), when people were ordered to cease
their goings and comings.
Everything
stopped coming in… no bread anymore, no this and no that.
People
started getting anxious. They felt uneasy.
On
Thursday, they headed to the bridge, close to the checkpoint. They were about
500-600 men and women.
The
soldiers manning the checkpoints ordered them home, telling them they were
animals.
Dusk
was falling rapidly and people headed home perturbed. Some wanted to sleep
outdoors.
Streets
remained almost deserted on Friday morning. A salvo of gunfire in the air met anyone
who dared get anywhere near a checkpoint.
Shelling
of Banias started at about 3-3:30 p.m. – mortars and tank shells from al-Awz
Bridge, al-Qosoor neighborhood and Ras al-Nabeh bridge.
We
then saw them (militiamen) move in from al-Awz under gunfire cover provided by
the army.
They
were about 150 men.
They
forced their way into the first house, herded everyone out, lined them up
against the wall and shot them dead.
They
knifed to death four or five people in the next house.
My
immediate family having left Syria, I started running to save my skin.
I
found a tiny aperture, where I stood motionless for one-and-a-half hours.
They
were forcing people out of their homes, lining them up against a wall and
shooting them.
They
shot or knifed to death 35 of my relatives, one of them a two-week-old baby and
eight children less than three years of age.
I
heard one of them ordering, “Kill them all, kill them all. Have no mercy.”
Another
was saying, “Look this one is still alive. Aim at the head.”
I
am Syrian. Sometimes I could not figure what they were saying.
Some
were wearing battle fatigues, others not. The footwear of some was white.
After
they left, I saw they had torched the limbs of two dead children.
They
killed 16 members of the Rajab family.
Of
the Jalloul family, they killed Abul-Abd, his two sons, his six daughters, his
father – who was wheelchair-bound – his mother and his two brothers.
All
members of the Dandash household were burned in their home.
Other
victims come from the Sabbal, Al’ini and al-Turk families…
All
the houses in Ras al-Nabeh (a neighborhood in Banias) are no more…
