Mihraç Ural, also known as Ali Kayyali (Arabic: علي كيالي), was a Turkish-Syrian Alawite militant and leader of the Syrian Resistance (formerly known as the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Sanjak of Iskandarun), a pro-Syrian government militia.
History
Ural was born in 1956 into a Alawite family in Hatay Province, Turkey.[1] He studied philosophy at Istanbul University.
Ural was detained on 10 March 1978 over a bank robbery and was imprisoned at Adana. He escaped through a 150m tunnel in August 1980. After his escape from prison, he fled to Syria where he was granted Syrian citizenship by Hafez al-Assad. In Syria, Ural ran a splinter faction of the People's Liberation Party-Front of Turkey.
In 1982 he was arrested in Stuttgart, Germany, and spent time in prison. Ural has led the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Sanjak of Iskenderun, now known as the Syrian Resistance, since 1986. He was detained at the Fleury-Mérogis Prison in France in 1988.
Ural was accused of involvement in the Bayda and Baniyas massacres and the Reyhanlı bombings of May 2013, but denied responsibility.[2] In March 2016 the Syrian Islamist jihadist group Ahrar al-Sham wrongly claimed to have killed Ural.[3]
In late January and early February 2018, Ural attended a Russian-sponsored Syrian peace conference in Sochi, Russia. Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu protested his attendance, saying "We want this person’s immediate arrest and extradition to Turkey".[4][5][6]
Ural was fatally injured on 6 July 2019, after his vehicle struck a roadside bomb while travelling along the Latakia-Slinfah road, after which he was flown by helicopter to a government hospital in Damascus where he succumbed to his injuries. The bombing happened in the context of the 2019 Northwestern Syria offensive, with Syrian Islamist group Tahrir al-Sham claiming responsibility for the attack.[7][8]
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