Assad cousin arrested over ‘road rage’ killing

Latakia governor Ibrahim Khodr al-Salem, who paid condolences to the family on behalf of the presidency, assured them that “your rights will not be set aside so long as President Assad is here”, Al-Watan reported.

In recent months the Assad regime has suffered major losses in Syria’s north and east, as well as near its coastal heartland of Latakia province.

The father of the murderer, Hilal al-Assad, head of the Forces of National Defense in Latakia, was killed in March 2014 in fighting with rebels in Kassab.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, thousands of people took to the streets in protest on Saturday in Latakia – a stronghold of the ruling Alawite religious community of which Assad is a member – to call for justice.

A quarter of a million people have died and more than 10 million driven from their homes in Syria’s four-year civil war that has left large swathes of the country in the hands of Islamic State militants.

“The militant group was able to control the eastern part of the airport after clashes with regime forces”, Hashim reported.

[Assad’s regime is at increasing risk amid surge of rebel attacks].

Suleiman Assad, a first cousin once removed of the president, is accused of shooting dead air force Col. Hassan al-Sheikh in an apparent road rage incident Thursday evening.

The demonstrators carried photos of Sheikh and Assad, and chanted “the people want the execution of Suleiman”. Suleiman proclaimed his innocence in a Facebook post on Monday, accusing his detractors of being “dogs” and “draft dodgers”. He also lashed out at critics, calling them “dogs” and “traitors” who dodged mandatory military service.

“You, Assad family, have mastered crime in every way possible”, one person wrote in a response to Suleiman’s comments.

Separately Monday, the Observatory said the Turkish border guards have assaulted a Syrian man who was trying to cross from Aleppo into the Turkish territories.

Each Sheikh and his alleged killer are Alawites, and the incident induced tensions in Latakia’s provincial capital, the place greater than 1,000 individuals on Saturday.