Syria receives Jordan drivers held hostage by regime-linked gang

The Eighth Brigade of the Military Security Branch (one of the Syrian regime’s security branches) received two Jordanian drivers on Thursday night from a gang supported by the Syrian regime that had kidnapped them 20 days prior on the Damascus-Daraa Road in southern Syria.

Ayman Abu Mahmoud Al-Hourani, a spokesperson for the Horan Free League, a media organisation covering events in southern Syria, told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that the Eighth Brigade in the city of Busra Al-Sham received the Jordanian drivers on Thursday night after being kidnapped and held hostage for about 20 days in the Lajat area, northeast of Daraa Governorate, in southern Syria.

Al-Hourani noted that the Eighth Brigade will hand them over to the Jordanian authorities within the next few hours, confirming that the drivers, Maher Bashir Al-Sufi and Mahmoud Samih Awida, were handed over with their personal documents and their car by the kidnapping gang in the village of Az-Zubayr in the Lajat area.

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He pointed out that the operation was coordinated and facilitated by the Military Security Branch (one of the branches of the Syrian regime) in Daraa, which supports the gang led by Muhammad Al-Alwan, known as “Abu Nebal”. Al-Hourani explained that the drivers were released without paying the $150,000 ransom demanded by the gang, who demanded the ransom from Awida’s mother via a WhatsApp message in early September.

The gang kidnapped the Jordanian drivers on 25 August as they were travelling on the international highway between Damascus and Amman, near the Mankat Al-Hatab checkpoint run by the Military Security Branch north of Daraa. Contact with them has been completely lost since then.

On 30 August, on the same highway, two sisters, Hind and Kifah Al-Ghazawi, died, while two children from the same family, Mahmoud and Sham, were injured, in addition to a third individual after their car overturned while being chased by thieves.

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