Aleppo’s ‘Clear Extortion Restitution’ Committee Receives 624 Complaints

More than four months have passed since the Clear Extortion Restitution Committee began its work in Aleppo city. The committee was established by the Aleppo governor through Decision No. 9 on March 4, with the aim of restoring real estate properties that were seized during the Assad regime era.

“Clear extortion” is the overt and evident seizure of a property without any legal document such as a title deed, lease contract, or any official document proving legitimate possession. 

The framework within which the committee operates aligns with the provisions of Article 45 of the Local Administration Law No. 107 of 2011, which grants the governor the authority to issue a decision to return a seized property to its owner and to dispossess the usurper. Consequently, the committee does not investigate the underlying ownership of properties; its work is limited to clear cases of extortion where the usurper holds no title deed.

The committee does not examine any dispute concerning the origin of ownership. For instance, the committee does not have the authority to investigate claims by a plaintiff alleging that the usurper obtained a title deed through forgery, as such matters pertain to disputes over the original right and fall under the jurisdiction of the civil court in the area where the property is located.

The Committee for Clear Extortion Restitution operates under the supervision of Aleppo Governor Azzam Al-Gharib and is supported by a Complaints Office and three members involved in legal and judicial affairs, including the Public Prosecutor at the Azaz Court, who currently chairs the committee.

The Complaints Office puts together the complaint application and the required documents to complete the process. The complainant, whether the owner of the usurped property or their legal representative, must attach to the application a copy of the owner’s personal identification card and a document proving ownership of the property, such as a title deed or court ruling.

The Complaints Office forwards the application to the committee, which reviews it along with the ownership documents, their history, and how possession was lost. The committee then refers the application to the police command, which in turn assigns it to the police station within whose jurisdiction the extorted property is located, to conduct a local investigation and hear testimonies from the complainant and the accused usurper. The police also collect statements from neighbours and gather all possible evidence. Upon completing the investigation, the police station submits its findings to the police command, which subsequently forwards them to the Clear Extortion Restitution Committee.

The committee examines the investigations and evidence received and then issues its decision. The decision may involve rejecting the application if the committee finds the evidence insufficient to prove ownership of the property. However, if the committee determines that the dispute concerns the origin of the right, it instructs the complainant to refer the matter to the competent civil judiciary. If the committee concludes that a clear extortion of the property has occurred, it issues a decision to evacuate the property and return it to its owner, forwarding the decision to the police for enforcement.

A legal source in Aleppo city told The Syria Report that some police stations refrain from enforcing these decisions, claiming that they are only authorised to enforce judicial decisions issued by courts, while the Clear Extortion Restitution Committee is an administrative body under the governorate and not a judicial entity. The same source added that, to circumvent this problem, the committee has started referring its decisions to the Public Prosecution at the Justice Palace to issue a judicial order instructing the police to enforce the committee’s eviction decision.

Before carrying out an eviction, the police issue a warning and grant the usurper a grace period of  between three and seven days to vacate the property. The committee does not adopt a unified system that sets a specific eviction period in all its decisions but rather estimates an appropriate period for each case individually, based on its particular circumstances, including the degree of damage and the urgency of eviction. 

In four months, the number of complaints submitted to the committee in Aleppo city had reached 624, according to statistics published by the local newspaper Al-Jamahir on July 8. The committee handled 411 of these complaints, and issued final decisions in 88 cases, in which the extortion was reversed and the property returned to its owner.

The committee expanded its verification process for 55 cases due to the complexity of their legal status, while another 30 cases were referred to the civil judiciary because they exceeded the committee’s jurisdiction.

The committee’s scope of work includes restoring extortion properties in both zoned areas and their properties registered in the land registers, as well as informal settlements, despite the challenges posed by the difficulty of proving ownership. Most buildings in informal settlements are not recorded in the land registers. In such cases, the committee relies on witness testimonies to verify whether the claimant was residing in the property before 2011.