Syria Arrests Paramilitary Leader Accused of Baniyas Massacre After Lebanon Kidnapping Report

Arrest Announced

On Thursday, state news agency SANA said that intelligence services had arrested Ali Kayali, also known as Mihrac Ural, the main suspect in the 2013 Banias massacre in which nearly 250 civilians were killed, while he was trying to flee across the border.

Kidnapping Reported

MTV earlier reported that “unknown individuals kidnapped a Syrian citizen named Ali Khalil Ibrahim from inside his home in Mansourieh, Metn, after tying up his wife and son.”

The broadcaster added that “The kidnapped individual is wanted by Turkish authorities. He is also known as Ali al‑Kayyali, nicknamed Mihraç Ural, and referred to by Syrians as the ‘Butcher of Baniyas.’ He is now inside Syrian territory, which makes this the third recorded kidnapping of Syrians from within Lebanese territory.”

MTV said that “Investigations into the matter have been initiated by the Information Branch” of Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces.

Background and Context

In May 2013, Syrian government and pro‑government forces killed at least 248 people in mass executions in the predominantly Sunni towns of Bayda and Banias in Tartus province, according to Human Rights Watch, which described the killings as “one of the deadliest instances of mass executions in Syria’s increasingly bloody conflict.”

The war that began with pro‑democracy protests in 2011 evolved into a complex armed conflict drawing in paramilitary groups, jihadists and foreign powers. In a multiconfessional society, the fighting took on a sectarian character, with the killings in Banias and Bayda often seen as a starting point of that shift.

The conflict ended in 2024 when an Islamist rebel group ousted President Bashar al‑Assad and seized power in a rapid offensive.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights puts the combined death toll from Banias and Bayda at around 400.

Kayali had escaped from prison in 1982 in his native Turkey before moving to Syria, where he later founded a paramilitary force aligned with Assad’s government.

The new Syrian authorities have detained dozens of former security officials; their trials began in April.

President Ahmed al‑Sharaa’s media adviser Ahmed Zeydan welcomed the arrest, describing Kayali as “a criminal… who committed massacres during the Syrian war, including those in Bayda and Banias. Every murderous criminal will be hunted down.