BEIRUT (Dispatches) -- A former Syrian army soldier has been shot dead in the Lebanese capital after a month-long online campaign targeting him over his military service during Syria’s war.
The Syrian Justice Archive (SJA) reported on Wednesday that Ali Alawi Aaqel, 36, a member of Syria’s Alawite community, was killed inside his car in the Hadath neighborhood on October 26.
His body was subsequently taken to Baabda Government Hospital, according to the archive.
Aaqel had previously posted on social media while serving in the Syrian army during the foreign-backed insurgency that began in 2011.
He stopped posting approximately two years ago, but last month, social media influencers and media figures linked to Syria’s current regime head by Abu Muhammad al-Jolani - a former Daesh and Al-Qaeda deputy - began circulating photographs of him in military uniform and targeting him over his past service.
The SJA said the terrorist campaign sought to portray Aaqel’s former military role as justification for violence against him, despite an absence of evidence that he had done any wrong.
“He was simply fulfilling mandatory military service as required by Syrian law, which applied to more than a million young men during the Syrian war, from all sects,” the archive wrote.
According to the SJA, Aaqel’s social media posts during the war had rejected sectarian divisions and called for reconciliation among Syria’s religious communities. He had also defended the Syrian army’s role in fighting armed extremist groups, including the takfiri terrorist group Daesh.
Aaqel was originally from the Ghab Plain and had lived in the coastal city of Latakia.
Following the online campaign against him, he said that he was summoned for questioning several times by the military intelligence service of the ruling Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) administration in Syria, although he maintained that there was no evidence or formal case against him.
A source close to Aaqel told the SJA that he had received death threats in Syria and fled to Lebanon earlier this month in an attempt to protect himself.
His killing came amid broader concerns about the safety of former Syrian military personnel, particularly members of the Alawite community.
HTS, a former Al-Qaeda branch, and allied militants seized Damascus on December 8, 2024, forcing President Bashar al-Assad to leave the country. 
Months later, armed factions affiliated with the current takfiri regime massacred Alawite civilians in their coastal heartlands.
Violence escalated sharply on March 7 when regime-loyal gunmen launched a brutal execution campaign targeting Alawites, going door to door and killing 1,700 civilians, including women and children, amid ongoing murder, kidnapping and robbery. 
The killings and subsequent security operations prompted many Alawites to flee Syria, some seeking refuge in neighboring Lebanon.