Security forces of Syria’s de facto authorities arrested a top official of the ousted Assad regime in Tartus in western Syria today during an operation marked by deadly clashes, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

General Mohammed Kanjo Hassan, director of military justice under the Bashar al-Assad regime and “responsible for imposing numerous death sentences” at the notorious Sendaya prison near Damascus, was arrested in the Khirbet al-Maza site along with 20 members of his personal guard, according to the Observatory.

Among the most powerful symbols of the fall of Damascus was the liberation of the grim Sendaya prison, where thousands of opponents of the Assad dynasty had been imprisoned, tortured and murdered.

Mohamed Kanjo Hasan sentenced “thousands of people to death in summary trials,” Diab Seriya, co-founder of Sendaya prison’s association of prisoners and disappeared, told AFP.

The association estimated Kanjo Hasan’s fortune at about $150 million, a fortune he built from money he took from inmate families who paid to get information about their incarcerated loved ones, information that was never released.

The arrest of Mohammed Kanjo Hassan, “one of the criminals of the Assad regime”, “constitutes an important step towards the administration of justice and the prosecution of criminals”, the Syrian National Coalition, an alliance of political exiles of the Syrian opposition, emphasized in a post on X.

Kanjo Hassan was allegedly “one of those responsible for the crimes in Saidnaya prison” and allegedly “pronounced death sentences and arbitrary sentences against thousands of prisoners,” according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.