The former Grand Mufti of Syria, Ahmed Hassoun, appeared on Thursday before the Fourth Criminal Court in Damascus, in the second session of his trial on charges related to inciting violence, justifying murder, and providing religious and political cover for crimes committed during the rule of the former regime, in the presence of representatives of Syrian and international human rights organizations, as part of following up on the proceedings of the case.
The session was presided over by Judge Fakhr Al-Din Al-Aryan, with Judges Abdul Hamid Muhammad Al-Hamoud and Hussam Hussein Abdul Rahman serving on the panel. The Public Prosecution was represented by Judge Omar Mahmoud Al-Radi. The session was dedicated to hearing the testimonies of the prosecution witnesses, as part of the ongoing judicial proceedings in the case.
According to the Enab Baladi website, a secret witness, codenamed 02 by the court, accused Hassoun of funding the “Jerusalem Brigade” through the son of the former Mufti, Abdul Rahman, with monthly sums ranging from $15,000 to $30,000.
The “Jerusalem Brigade” emerged with the escalation of the Syrian regime’s military operations against the opposition during 2012 and 2013. At that time, Bashar al-Assad’s regime, with the support of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, formed armed groups around al-Nayrab Airport, near Aleppo in northwestern Syria.
The witness, who worked in the Religious Inspection Department of the Ministry of Endowments between 2014 and 2018, said that Hassoun was funding the brigade through money he received from the families of detainees in exchange for working to release them.
He added that Abdul Rahman was taking money in gold coins from the families of detainees.
He also accused him of causing the witness to be detained for 88 days in 2018 for failing to perform his mandatory service.
In contrast, Hassoun did not accept the witness’s testimony and denied knowing him.
The second witness spoke about the impact of Hassoun's fatwa on the course of events in Syria, following the Syrian revolution.
As for the second witness, Muhammad al-Ali, who was one of the students who regularly attended Hassoun’s lessons in Aleppo between 1985 and 1986, he may be arrested while returning to his city of Hasakah, accusing the former Mufti of being the one who gave his name to the intelligence services, based on what one of the investigators said at the time.
The second witness spoke about the impact of Hassoun’s fatwa on the course of events in Syria, following the Syrian revolution, explaining that he came to the city of Sanamayn in Daraa Governorate, where the witness was residing, on April 24, 2011, after the deaths of demonstrators there, to warn against “rebelling against the ruler.”
The court held its first session on June 25, when the head of the judicial body read the indictment against Hassoun, which included a series of charges related to exploiting his official position as Mufti of the Republic to achieve personal interests, and establishing extensive relationships outside official frameworks with the head of the ousted regime, Bashar al-Assad, the former director of the General Intelligence Directorate, Ali Mamlouk, and a number of senior army officers, in addition to the leaders of the sectarian militias that participated in the fighting alongside the regime forces inside Syria.
The indictment also included charges that Hassoun delivered lectures to officers and members of the former regime's army, calling for support for military operations against regime opponents. It further alleged that he made media statements that the prosecution considered to be direct incitement against civilians in areas outside the regime's control, and against Syrian refugees fleeing military operations, particularly in eastern Aleppo and Idlib. According to the indictment, these statements also included calls for regime forces to destroy those areas.
The Public Prosecution also accuses Hassoun of publicly supporting, in his official and symbolic capacity as Grand Mufti of the Republic, a number of military and security figures accused of committing war crimes, including Issam Zahreddine and Qassem Soleimani, as well as his declared support for the Russian and Iranian interventions in Syria, despite the grave violations and massacres against Syrian civilians attributed by the indictment to those forces and the militias allied with them.
