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Dr. Rifaat Al-Assad uncovers the truth about the 1982 Hama incident and reveals the names of the field commanders who managed the crisis that Syria went through.

The Paris Conference:

On the sidelines of the Paris Conference recently held to discuss the future of Syria and attended by Dr. Rifaat Al-Assad and a number of Syrian opposition parties and figures, Assad spoke about the events that took place in Hama in 1982.

At first, he spoke of the outbreak of a “faith revolution” in Hama -- as he called it -- staged for the purpose of aborting the socialist national movement launched upon the Syrian Baath Party’s rise to power in 1963.

Al-Assad said that this “faith revolution” believed it offered the solution that could put an end to the frustration felt by the Syrian people at the time. But the revolutionaries first assassinated Colonel Muhammad Rida in 1963, the head of the intelligence department in Hama, a couple of months after the Baath Party came to power. In 1964 Sheikh Marwan Hadid expressed his religious opinion judging the Alawites, Druzes, Ismailis, Shiites, and Christians as unbelievers. No one was exempted from his judgment and as a result he fought and killed a large number of people. Thus, spree killing and assassinations continued in secret from 1963 till 1982.

He also said that news on assassinations carried out in secret overshadowed all other news without the Syrians hearing of a single demonstration or a single article explaining the aims of such killings, and without discovering the identity of the parties behind the killing. This state of affairs continued until a great surprise unveiled the existence of an army in Hama ready to fight. This army killed members of the Baath Party Command and Baathists in Hama as well as communists and secular activists. The Syrians screamed for state help and raised questions about its absence. It responded by sending some military units to Hama, but it was defeated as the armed men stationed in the city had weapons more advanced than those of the Syrian army, hence their ability to defeat the military units sent by the government. In the aftermath, the latter lent its weight to freeing Hama from the army of rebels holed up inside the city.

Dr.Al-Assad said that late President Hafez Al-Assad formed two committees to that end, one to defend Damascus and another to focus on Hama.

The first committee was headed by President Assad and included:
1- Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam
2- Defense Minister Mustafa Tlas
3- Others including Abdel Ghani Kaddour

The second committee focusing on Hama was headed by Chief of Staff Hikmat Al-Shihabi and included:
1- Member of the Regional Command Walid Hamdoun
2- Deputy Chief of Staff Ali Aslan
3- Others

The Dr.Assad indicated that the latter committee conducted the military operations in Hama and said that none of its members had any contact with him. He was rather informed about the unfolding of the events from the periodic reports sent by the committee to the army command that in turn circulated the reports to all the other army units including Unit 569 led by Assad himself.

He also said that he is unaware of the missing people and that no Syrian talked to him about any missing person. While Assad referred to a high death toll, he said that the Syrian border was open to all the Arabs who could enter Syria without visas, in reference to the fact that there were among the rebel forces stationed in Hama other groups coming from Iraq, some of whom with forged passports. He added saying that they received military training on the Syrian-Iraqi border and they were the ones who assassinated the Syrians from 1963 till 1982. Assad said that their training was supervised by Nizar Hamdoun, Amin Al-Hafez, Michel Aflak, and Shibli Al-Aysami, in coordination with Sheikh Adnan Saadeddeen.

Assad gave details on Sheikh Marwan Hadid’s arrest in an apartment in Al-Azbakiyya neighborhood in Damascus. He was found there along with six people including his deputy Farid Kaddah who was a Alawite Muslim, not a Sunni.

Dr.Al-Assad encouraged the truth seekers to inquire into the facts before accepting any piece of information, and he described the young generation of making hasty judgments and being kind-hearted.

The Dr. spoke about the rumors that circulated about what happened in the Tadmor Prison in 1980, the great misrepresentations promoted by some people bearing grudges, and their striving hard to lend them credibility. According to these misrepresentations, the orders to execute the Muslim Brotherhood prisoners were issued by him personally without referring to the law or the authorities. He refuted their claims and uncovered their ignorance and grudges by asserting that the decision to execute the prisoners was taken following the assassination attempt made by Muslim Brotherhood groups on President Hafez Al-Assad in a welcoming ceremony of a head of state during which the president was wounded and taken to hospital. Dr. Assad said that the supreme commander of the army and the armed forces President Hafez Al-Assad, during his stay in hospital, made the law that authorized the execution of the members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood Party. Enjoying constitutional prerogatives, the president made field decisions in his capacity as the supreme commander of the army and the armed forces, without consulting the legislative authority. The Dr. asserted that this law was enforced in all Syrian prisons, not just in the Tadmor Prison. He denied that he was in Damascus during the enforcement of this law and said that his presence on the Syrian coast, as reported below, was in line with the president’s will. He also explained that he learnt about the making of this law and its enforcement by the Syrian authorities when he was on the coast.

As for the reason behind his presence in Lattakia on the Syrian coast while Muslim Brotherhood prisoners were executed in all Syrian prisons, he said that it had to do with his nomination by President Hafez Al-Assad to the position of director of higher education. The nomination came in the aftermath of the Dr.’s use of his leverage in the army and the party to force corrupt leaders such as Prime Minister Mahmoud Al-Ayoubi, Abdel Karim Ali, Naji Jamil, and other party figures to resign, as a corrective measure taken in the Baath Party. The late president considered it a coup d’état orchestrated against his regime since those figures were his protégés, therefore he relieved the Dr. of the command of Unit 569 so that he would focus on the Regional Command and entrusted him with the task of running higher education. Dr. Assad said that he was the one who built Tishreen University in Lattakia and the University of Homs, in addition to expanding the campus of the University of Aleppo and building a number of educational institutions in Syria.

Assad explained that he was elected President of the Supreme Constitutional Court, the highest jurisdictional authority in the state and the party, by the National Command that was in turn elected by the party national conference. He said that the National Command had the power to suspend the Baath Party Supreme Constitutional Court in the cases of war and a coup d’état. However, the party regional conference, not its national conference, suspended the activities of this court in 1980 without a war or a coup d’état taking place, which was seen by a number of party leaders as a violation of the party constitution and the constitution of the Supreme Constitutional Court.

He summed up the situation in Hama as a “genuine war situation” and wondered, “What would the French authorities do in case a political party occupied a French city militarily? Would the authorities allow a party to occupy Lyon?”

Assad said that the struggle taking place in Syria at the time was between the Muslim Brotherhood Party on the one hand, and the government and the people on the other hand. He indicated that all the other parties in Syria distanced themselves from the Muslim Brotherhood and its actions, and added that even Iraqi parties withdrew the support they had earlier lent to the movement.

According to him, there were Syrian Baathists in Iraq, in addition to Muslim Brotherhood members, Syrian communists, Syrian nationalists, Alawite figures, and Christian figures. They used to hold conventions in France, the US, and other places, but when the Muslim Brothers started the fight in Syria, all these allies disowned them, and as a result they were the only party that engaged in killing the Syrian people.

Dr. Assad said that during the Muslim Brotherhood occupation of Hama, they killed all Baathists, secularists and communists residing in the city. He related the story of Colonel Ra’if Alwani, a follower of Salah Jadid and Noureddin Al-Atassi who had been sentenced to death and had kept himself out of sight in Hama. The colonel, according to Assad, fled the city in underwear while screaming the following message to the Syrian authorities, “Execute me and don’t let those people kill me. They have killed all my family members.”

Assad said that Muslim Brothers did not kill Alawites exclusively, nor did they adopt the slogan of killing Alawites; they rather killed the Syrian people indiscriminately. He mentioned the slogan “ADAS”, circulated at the time by the Baathists expelled from the party and residing in Iraq, referring to the Alawis, Druzes, and Ismailis, with the connotation that their killing is sanctioned.

He said that after the liberation of Hama the city regained normal life and all its residents who had fled upon its occupation by the Muslim Brothers returned. He also stressed the fact that all the statements conveying different messages fall within the scope of political exploitation “which seems to be beneficial” as he said.

Assad also said that he did not enter Hama, nor did he visit it throughout his life, and added that no soldier from the Defense Brigades entered the city.

He explained what he considered a public misperception of the Defense Brigades as working under his command. He said that the brigades existed before he joined the army and that their task was restricted to the defense of Syrian airports and the military aircraft stationed there. As for Unit 569 commanded by Dr. Assad, it was in charge of protecting the country against Israeli advance and was stationed at different pivots such as Dayr Al-Ashayer, Lebanon, and Maysaloun. He praised the heroic deeds of its soldiers who stood as a bulwark against many infiltration attempts made by the enemy.

Assad said that not a single soldier from Unit 569 entered Hama or fought in it. He expressed his surprise when around 200 soldiers from Unit 569 were sent to the city six months before the beginning of the incident to protect some party and government leaders and officials living in the city. Those soldiers suffered defeat along with others after the Muslim Brotherhood army launched an armed mutiny, which prompted the Syrian authorities to take the decision to send the army in order to liberate the city from the occupiers.