‘Don’t trust anyone’: Have Syria’s Alawites lost faith in new government?

Syria’s Alawites fear they may never be safe after hundreds were killed in sectarian-motivated violence.

On March 8, Ibrahim was abducted in front of his two boys and wife by fighters who had stormed into the coastal city of Jableh, Latakia.

The fighters, nominally aligned with Syria’s new government, had descended on the region and were looking for Alawites –  a religious minority to which Syria’s former leader Bashar al-Assad belongs – and Ibrahim was Alawite.

Al Jazeera’s authentication unit, Sanad, found, assessed and verified a video identifying Ibrahim’s body. Mazen*, Ibrahim’s cousin who did not wish to give his surname, said many other people he knows were killed, too.

“The [fighters] killed my friend who was pregnant and her three-year-old daughter … They killed another friend who was a pharmacist and her husband who was a doctor. They also killed my cousin and her mother-in-law, who was 80 years old,” Mazen told Al Jazeera.

“Why didn’t anyone stop [the killing]?” he added.