Assad cousin arrested over ‘road rage’ killing

DAMASCUS, Syria — Syrian authorities have arrested Suleiman Assad, a cousin of the regime’s president, who is accused of killing a military officer in a road rage incident, official news agency SANA said Monday.

“Suleiman Hilal al-Assad has been arrested and transferred to the appropriate authorities,” SANA reported, without adding details.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, cited local sources in reporting he was detained on the road between Latakia and Qardaha, President Bashar al-Assad’s ancestral village.

The killing of retired Air Force colonel Hassan al-Sheikh took place Thursday evening in the coastal province of Latakia, a regime stronghold and heartland of the Alawite minority to which Assad belongs.

Both Sheikh and his alleged killer are Alawites, and the incident caused tensions in Latakia’s provincial capital, where more than 1,000 people protested the murder Saturday and demanded justice for Sheikh.

Earlier Monday, Syrian daily Al-Watan quoted Sheikh’s relatives as saying the president had pledged the crime would not go unpunished.

Sheikh’s wife Mayssa Ghanem told the paper, which is close to the government, that she had “received a promise from President Assad to punish the perpetrator, whoever he is.”

The pledge was passed to her by “official delegations that came to Latakia to express their sympathies,” she said.

“I have confidence in the word of the president, who is personally taking charge. We will get our rights.”

Suleiman Assad killed Sheikh after the colonel reportedly passed him at a crossroads in Latakia.

The alleged killer’s father, Hilal Assad, a first cousin of the president, headed the defense forces in the Mediterranean city before his death in March 2014 clashes with rebels in nearby Kasab.

Sheikh’s brother Nasser, who was with the colonel at the time of his death, told Al-Watan he witnessed the victim being “killed in cold blood because he did not give way in a traffic jam.”

He hoped “the blood of my brother will save us from these criminal actions that kill people on the streets,” in an apparent reference to the growing pro-regime militias in war-strewn Syria that are heavily-armed and often act with impunity.

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.