DAMASCUS (Dispatches) -- The Syrian government says the occupying regime of Israel assassinated a high-ranking Syrian official who spent 12 years in an Israeli prison before serving decades in the Syrian government.
The official, Midhat Saleh, who was responsible for overseeing the strategic Golan Heights boundary, was shot and killed by an apparent sniper while inside Syria near the shared between with the occupied Palestinian territories.
In a statement announcing his death, Syria’s Presidency of the Council of Ministers said Saleh was “targeted by the Israeli enemy with bursts of treacherous bullets while returning to his home.”
Saleh, a member of the Druse religious minority, served 12 years in an Israeli prison on charges of using mines and explosives with the intention of killing Zionist soldiers.
In 1997, after his release, he went to Syria, where he was elected to parliament.
Saleh, 54, was assassinated in Ein al-Tina, Syria, according to SANA, the Syrian state news agency. The town is directly across the border from Majdal Shams, the Druse village in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in which he was born.
He was arrested by Israeli intelligence agents in 1985, along with other Druse from the occupied Golan villages, and convicted of terrorism.
After representing the Golan in Syria’s parliament, he was appointed head of the country’s Golan Office and an adviser to President Bashar al-Assad.
Saleh was praised by officials in Assad’s government. Hussein Arnous, Syria’s prime minister, described Saleh’s assassination as a cowardly act.
Hussam Edin Aala, the country’s United Nations representative, called him “a man who devoted his life to defending the rights of his people in the occupied Syrian Golan.”
Hamas said the assassination will not deter the resistance of the locals and their outright rejection of the Zionist regime’s policies.
The statement said Saleh “had resisted the Israeli occupation, rejected annexation of the Golan Heights and underscored the unity of Syrian people as well as Syria’s territorial integrity”.
“The criminal act of Saleh’s assassination exposes the bloody mentality of the Zionist regime, which has its roots in murder and terrorism. The heinous crime will not stop the resistance and steadfastness of people in the occupied Golan, who reject Zionists’ projects.”
A senior Syrian official censured the assassination a cowardly act, saying the crime is rooted in “Israeli nature” which will be avenged.
“Regarding the murder of our former MP and hero, this is just another cowardly act by the criminal Israelis which is very common of them. This is not the first time they commit such crimes. Every day, there are crimes whether they are against innocent Palestinian civilians, women, children, elderly or against Syrian civilians,” Syria’s former MP Fares Shehabi told Press TV.
“It comes within the context of Israeli aggression and Israeli nature; and this instability in the region cannot be solved with the existence of this criminal entity, this colonial apartheid entity called Israel. We will never accept to live under constant terrorism by this entity; we will be defiant and we will respond in the time and manner of our choosing,” he added.