Alawites are skeptical that the committee, appointed by Jolani, will lead to accountability for the mass murder of over 1,600 civilians in March.

Jolani terrorist has extended a deadline for a fact-finding committee to produce its report on the massacre of over 1,600 Alawite civilians on Syria’s coast last month.

Starting on 7 March, armed groups affiliated with the Syrian government went house to house, killing unarmed civilians, including many women and children, from Syria’s Alawite religious minority, based on their religious identity.

Led by Sharaa, a former Al-Qaeda commander, Syria’s security forces are comprised of various Sunni armed factions who embrace Salafism. This ideology calls for the killing of Alawite and Shia Muslims, labeling them “apostates.”

On 9 March, Sharaa reportedly tasked a fact-finding committee with producing a report within 30 days that would help determine the perpetrators and hold them to account.

When asked by Reuters if fighters from his defense ministry were involved in the killings, he said it was up to the committee to find evidence.

Hundreds of videos have been posted to social media, taken by members of fighting units belonging to Syria’s General Security and Ministry of Defense themselves, showing the brutal execution of unarmed Alawite men between 7 and 9 March.

In some instances, unarmed men were forced to crawl and bark like dogs in the street before their execution.

In a decree published late on Thursday, Sharaa said the committee had requested more time to complete its work and that he would grant it a non-renewable three-month extension.

Sharaa has vowed to hold perpetrators accountable while blaming the violence primarily on “regime remnants,” former members of the Syrian army under former president Bashar al-Assad.

However, Reuters noted that Alawite residents of the coastal province of Latakia, where much of the violence took place, expressed concern that the investigation is not sincere.

Firas, a 43-year-old Alawite who only gave his first name out of fear of retribution, told the news agency that the extension was an attempt to “stall and buy more time.” He said there was little hope the committee’s work would lead to real accountability.

In 2015, while serving as the head of the Nusra Front, the official Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Sharaa, in an interview with Al Jazeera, called for Alawites to convert to Sunni Islam or be killed.The Alawite sect had “moved outside the religion of God and of Islam,” Julani declared, while warning the religious minority group would only be spared if they “drop their weapons,” abandon their religion, and “return to Islam.”

As of 23 March, the SOHR had documented the killing of 1,614 civilians as a result of 62 massacres and other individual incidents of executions in four Syrian provinces. In addition, a large number of people remain missing, and many unidentified corpses of victims are still being held in hospitals, waiting for family members to identify them.

The Cradle Media report