Hussein Harmoush
حسين هرموش
Also known as: First FSA commander
Biography
Hussein Harmoush was a Syrian army officer — a first lieutenant — who became the first Syrian military officer to publicly defect from the Assad government and announce the formation of the Free Syrian Army. On June 9, 2011, just three months after the uprising began, he appeared in a video broadcast from Turkish territory announcing that he and other officers were forming an armed force to protect Syrian protesters from the regime's security forces. He was later abducted from Turkish soil by Syrian intelligence agents, forcibly returned to Syria, appeared on Syrian state television recanting his defection, and was subsequently tried by a military court and sentenced to execution. His fate became a symbol of the risks facing Syrian defectors and the Assad government's willingness to conduct cross-border intelligence operations.