{"id":61790,"date":"2012-12-27T05:31:55","date_gmt":"2012-12-27T03:31:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=61790"},"modified":"2014-01-07T22:27:08","modified_gmt":"2014-01-07T20:27:08","slug":"top-syrian-military-figure-defects-to-opposition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2012\/12\/27\/top-syrian-military-figure-defects-to-opposition\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Syrian military figure defects to opposition"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1><\/h1>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-61791\" alt=\"syria\" src=\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/syria.jpg\" width=\"606\" height=\"365\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/syria.jpg 606w, https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/syria-300x181.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 606px) 100vw, 606px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>View Photo Gallery \u2014<\/strong>\u00a0In this image made from video broadcast on Al Arabiya TV on Dec. 25, 2012, Syrian Maj. Gen. Abdul-Aziz Jassem al-Shallal makes remarks saying he is joining &#8220;the people&#8217;s revolution.&#8221; Syrian airstrikes continue:\u2009The Syrian military continues its aerial bombardment, inflicting deadly results on civilians.<\/p>\n<h3>By\u00a0Babak Dehghanpisheh,\u00a0Wednesday, December\u00a026,\u00a012:39\u00a0PM<\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<article>BEIRUT \u2014 The head of Syria\u2019s military police said in video footage aired by the al-Arabiya network late Tuesday that he has defected and joined the rebel forces battling the government of President Bashar al-Assad.Maj. Gen. Abdul-Aziz Jassem al-Shallal is one of the highest-ranking officers to leave the Syrian military, and his defection appeared to signal growing disillusionment among senior commanders about the outcome of the conflict that has left at least 40,000 Syrians dead.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/article>\n<p>3<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><b>Gallery<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The destruction of Aleppo:\u2009The city that used to be the commercial capital of Syria is now a site of ruin as the civil war takes its toll.<\/p>\n<p><b>Graphic<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Timeline: Major events in the country\u2019s tumultuous uprising that began in March 2011.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<article>In recent weeks, the Syrian military has adopted increasingly heavy-handed tactics, including firing Scud missiles at rebel positions \u2014 a development that observers say reflects the government\u2019s desperation. Rebel forces have also made a number of\u00a0notable gains, taking control of more than half a dozen military bases and expanding their arsenal with confiscated weapons.Shallal\u2019s defection comes a little more than two weeks after 13 Syrian military officers crossed into Turkey on Dec. 7.<\/p>\n<p>The spokesman for the Syrian Foreign Ministry,\u00a0<span class=\"removed_link\" title=\"http:\/\/articles.washingtonpost.com\/2012-12-03\/world\/35623328_1_syrian-president-bashar-al-assad-syrian-town-turkish-officials\">Jihad Makdissi, also left the country<\/span>\u00a0in early December under circumstances that the government characterized as a leave of absence but that opposition activists said was a defection.<\/p>\n<p>In the video, Shallal is wearing his military uniform and appears calm, saying he had left the military because of \u201cthe diversion of the army from its basic mission of protecting the country to become gangs of murder and destruction.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In a phone interview with the al-Arabiya satellite network, Shallal said that numerous senior government officials would like to defect but are not able to because of close monitoring by the Syrian security forces.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMany figures of high rank in the government want to defect, but the situation is not allowing them to,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Getting Shallal out of Syria into Turkey was a complicated and dangerous operation that was planned and coordinated by the Free Syrian Army, a rebel official said. Loay Mokdad, a logistics officer and spokesman with the rebel force, said that the trip took four days and involved the use of motorcycles and horses, as well as a long trek through the mountains along the border between the two countries.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe welcome all defections and are ready to help, because there is no reason be afraid of regime retaliation anymore,\u201d Mokdad said, adding that the regime will \u201cend in a few weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Shallal\u2019s defection coincides with a string of attacks across the country by the Syrian military that have left at least 100 people dead, according to the Local Coordination Committees activist network.<\/p>\n<p>At least 20 people were killed Wednesday in the village of Qahtaniya, in northern Syria, when the military hammered the area with artillery shells, opposition groups said. A gruesome\u00a0video\u00a0posted online showed several bloody bodies, including those of children, laid out on a floor.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the apparent unwillingness of both sides to lay down their arms, U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi arrived in Damascus on Sunday in the latest effort to negotiate a political solution to the conflict. Brahimi met with several opposition figures in Damascus on Tuesday and is scheduled to travel to Russia, one of the Syrian government\u2019s staunchest backers, on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>Ahmed Ramadan and Suzan Haidamous contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>View Photo Gallery \u2014\u00a0In this image made from video broadcast on Al Arabiya TV on Dec. 25, 2012, Syrian Maj. Gen. Abdul-Aziz Jassem al-Shallal makes remarks saying he is joining &#8220;the people&#8217;s revolution.&#8221; Syrian airstrikes continue:\u2009The Syrian military continues its aerial bombardment, inflicting deadly results on civilians. By\u00a0Babak Dehghanpisheh,\u00a0Wednesday, December\u00a026,\u00a012:39\u00a0PM &nbsp; BEIRUT \u2014 The head [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":61791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}