Talal Naji, Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was arrested in the capital, Damascus.
A senior figure from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command (PFLP-GC) was detained in Syria on Saturday, as part of an apparent crackdown by Syrian authorities on Palestinian resistance groups.
Talal Naji, Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was arrested in the capital, Damascus, according to a Palestinian official who spoke to the Lebanese news network Al Mayadeen.
This follows the arrest of two senior leaders from the Islamic Jihad Movement around two weeks ago.
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Engineer Khaled Khaled, head of the group’s Syrian branch, and Engineer Yasser Al-Zafri, head of its organizational committee, were both detained without any official explanation.
Just days earlier, Barbara Leaf, former US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, revealed that Syria’s transitional president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, had signaled understanding of so-called Israeli security concerns and promised to prevent any group or nation from launching attacks on Israel from Syrian soil.
The New York Times described the arrests of the two Islamic Jihad officials as a rare move by Syrian authorities, suggesting a shift in regional alliances.
The actions appear to reflect a new political orientation in Damascus under al-Sharaa, who is reportedly moving away from Iran’s sphere of influence.
The Times also reported that Washington has made the lifting of sanctions on Syria conditional upon the new leadership’s willingness to confront groups it labels as “extremist”.
President al-Sharaa, who came to power after leading the coalition that ousted Bashar al-Assad, has been lobbying for an end to US sanctions, which continue to stall Syria’s economic recovery and postwar reconstruction.
Although some restrictions on humanitarian aid have been eased, the bulk of sanctions remain firmly in place.
The recent detentions coincided with a visit by a delegation of Republican lawmakers to Damascus—the first high-level US congressional visit to Syria in more than ten years.
(PC, Al Mayadeen)
