Latakia – Linda Ali

It was 11 a.m. on a Saturday in May when Hiam (45 years old), a government employee, stood near the Hmeimim bridge in the city of Jableh, waiting for her daughter to return from private lessons. Suddenly, two young men on a motorcycle approached, grabbed her mobile phone from her hand, and sped off.

Hiam called for help from the many passersby who witnessed the incident, but no one could do anything. Nearly everyone saw the two thieves, who appeared to be in their twenties.

The young men wore hats, and the motorcycle had no license plates for identification.

Unregistered motorcycles are rampant in Latakia governorate, operating openly in front of traffic police without intervention. They have become a primary cause of harassment and theft in the city.

“The shop’s earnings were gone”

Last March, Michel (38 years old) was on his way home at 10 p.m. as usual. He is a shopkeeper in a grocery store in one of the unregulated neighborhoods of Latakia.

Michel closed the shop, held his small bag containing the shop’s earnings, and walked to his nearby home.

At a dark turn due to the power outage, three individuals attacked him, struck his face, knocked him to the ground, and stole his bag before fleeing.

Michel couldn’t see their faces or hear their voices as it was very dark. He went home and the next morning filed a report with the police. Since then, he has heard nothing about his stolen items, which were valued at over two million Syrian pounds ($130 USD).

The bag also contained a mobile phone and some personal documents such as his ID card and family book, which he hastened to replace at the civil registry. He has lost hope of retrieving his money or phone after all this time.

Electricity is cut off in the evenings and nights in slum areas, while solar-powered lighting has been installed on main roads and some regulated neighborhoods, providing some light.

These neighborhoods rarely face thefts compared to the slum areas, where it’s rare for a day to pass without news of a new theft or snatching incident, according to some locals.

Traditional snatching methods

Aliya (57 years old) was walking with her twenty-year-old daughter in the evening, in the street leading to their home in the al-Saliba neighborhood in the center of Latakia, when a person on a motorcycle attacked her. He grabbed the lady’s bag, and she resisted, making her daughter try to hit him with her bag.

Their resistance and screams did not deter him. The street was very dark, and it wasn’t a crowded shopping street, so the thief let go of the lady’s bag and instead took the daughter’s bag, causing her to fall to the ground as he snatched it and sped off.

Luckily, the money was in the mother’s bag, and the daughter had her phone in her hand. The thief only ended up with a bag containing some cosmetics and an amount not exceeding 20,000 Syrian pounds, according to their statement to Enab Baladi.

There are no official data or statistics on theft and snatching incidents in Latakia, while locals distrust official figures believing the numbers are higher.

Earlier this year, the head of the Criminal Security Branch in Latakia, Ali Saleh Muhammad, said to the local Al-Watan newspaper that 567 crimes were revealed in Latakia during 2023, including 14 murders, 11 robberies, and three kidnappings, in addition to 250 cybercrimes, and thefts topped the list with 379 crimes.