Syrian intelligence arrested Ali Kayali, known as “Maraj Oural”, while he was attempting to flee across the border. He is the prime suspect in the Baniyas massacre on Syria’s coast on 2 and 3 May 2013, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency.
Kayali arrested after his deputy was detained
Damascus correspondent Adham Abu al-Hussam said the intelligence service had announced Kayali’s arrest at the border as he attempted to flee, without specifying whether he was captured near the Syrian-Turkish or Syrian-Lebanese border. Kayali’s detention came days after the arrest of Jamal Tripoli, his leading aide and deputy under the rule of ousted president Bashar al-Assad. The Interior Ministry’s Internal Security Forces announced Tripoli’s arrest last week.
Abu al-Hussam quoted sources as confirming that Tripoli’s arrest on the fourth of this month had helped lead to Kayali, and possibly to several of his aides. The intelligence service has not yet announced which body will prosecute Oural.
Syrian presidency celebrates Maraj Oural’s arrest
Presidential media adviser Ahmad Muwaffaq Zaidan said in a post on X: “We congratulate our people on the Syrian intelligence service, in co-operation with the Interior Ministry, arresting the criminal Maraj Oural, also known as Ali Kayali, who carried out massacres against our people during the Syrian revolution, including the al-Bayda massacre in Baniyas.” Oural was born in Antakya, south-western Turkey, in 1956, but described himself as a Syrian Arab.
Maraj Oural, prime suspect in Baniyas massacre. In the 1970s he began armed activity against Turkey and joined the communist left-wing Ajilciler organisation. He later joined the Iskenderun Liberation Front militia. Arrested in Turkey in 1978, he escaped in 1980 and fled to Syria.
Prime suspect in Baniyas massacre
- The 1970s
Beginning of armed activity
During Hafez al-Assad’s rule in the 1980s, he obtained Syrian citizenship and became known as Ali Kayali. Oural began armed activity in the 1970s against the Turkish government and joined a communist left-wing organisation known as Ajilciler, which was associated with acts of violence. He also joined the Iskenderun Liberation Front militia, declaring a struggle to return the district to Syria.
- 1978
Arrest in Turkey
He was arrested in 1978 on charges of terrorist acts including the bombing of the US consulate in Adana and a bank robbery. He was moved between 12 Turkish prisons before escaping in 1980 after bribing his jailer following General Kenan Evren’s coup. He then fled to Syria and joined the Syrian army.
Oural’s path from armed activity to the shabiha
With the outbreak of the Syrian revolution in 2011, Oural re-emerged as the leader of an armed shabiha group called the Syrian Resistance–Popular Front for the Liberation of the Iskenderun Sanjak. The group was based in the countryside around Latakia and took part in battles as an auxiliary force for the regime’s army.
Human rights organisations and international and local bodies have accused Oural and his group of committing war crimes and sectarian crimes against hundreds of civilians, earning him the nickname “the butcher of Baniyas”. Among the main crimes attributed to him is involvement in the Houla massacre in the countryside of Homs in May 2012, which killed 111 civilians, most of them women and children.
He is also accused of responsibility for the massacre in Baniyas’s al-Bayda neighbourhood on 2 May 2013, where hundreds of unarmed civilians were executed by slaughtering, burning and gunfire.
