Justice ministry says these executed have been ‘criminals’ answerable for the deaths and injury to infrastructure and public property.
Syria has executed 24 folks after charging them with igniting wildfires final yr that left three folks useless and burned hundreds of hectares (acres) of forests, the justice ministry mentioned.
Though executions are frequent in war-torn Syria, the variety of these put to demise on Wednesday was bigger than typical.
These executed have been charged with “committing terrorist acts that led to demise and injury to state infrastructure and private and non-private property by way of using flammable materials”, the justice ministry mentioned in a press release carried by state media on Thursday.
Eleven others have been sentenced to exhausting labour for all times, 4 to momentary penal labour and 5 minors have been handed jail sentences starting from 10 to twenty years for related expenses, it added.
Their identities weren’t disclosed, and no particulars have been supplied on the place and the way the executions occurred.
The suspects, the ministry mentioned, have been recognized late final yr in an inside ministry probe into wildfires within the provinces of Latakia, Tartus and Homs.
“They confessed that they’d began fires at a number of places within the three provinces they usually additionally confessed to convening conferences to plan the fires” that occurred intermittently in September and October 2020, in line with the justice ministry.
It mentioned it documented 187 fires affecting 280 cities and villages final yr.
They devastated 13,000 hectares (32,000 acres) of agricultural land and 11,000 hectares of forest land, whereas additionally damaging greater than 370 properties, the justice ministry mentioned.
President Bashar al-Assad’s hometown of Qardaha in Latakia province was exhausting hit by the fires, which closely broken a constructing used as storage for the state-owned tobacco firm, a part of which collapsed.
Al-Assad made a uncommon go to to the area shortly after the hearth was introduced below management.
Syria Researcher at Human Rights Watch Sara Kayyali advised Al Jazeera that the information of the 24 executions was “surprising”.
“What we all know from the counterterrorism courts from the instances that we’ve seen previously is that there isn’t any due course of afforded for anybody who’s accused of an act of terrorism – no proper to a defence and no lawyer” Kayyali mentioned.
“This motion by the Syrian authorities actually alerts how far we’ve to go to reform the system earlier than any Syrian is protected.”
Syrian legislation nonetheless gives for the demise penalty for offences together with terrorism, arson and armed forces desertion, in line with rights group Amnesty Worldwide.
In its newest demise penalty report revealed this yr, Amnesty mentioned it was in a position to corroborate data indicating that executions occurred in Syria in 2020 however mentioned it didn’t have enough data to present a dependable minimal determine.
The demise penalty is often carried out by hanging in Syria.
Syria Researcher at Amnesty Worldwide Diana Semaan advised Al Jazeera that confessions are “routinely extracted below torture or different ill-treatment and duress”.
Syria’s decade-old battle has left a whole bunch of hundreds useless and displaced half the nation’s inhabitants, together with 5 million refugees exterior the nation.
Kareem Chehayeb contributed to this report from Beirut.