Background
Major General Dib Zaitoun was born in Damascus to a Sunni family. His father was a Sergeant in the Syrian Army.
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Mohammed Zaitoun
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He is one of many officials sanctioned by the European Union for their actions against protesters participating in the Syrian civil war. He was commissioned as a Lieutenant in a Mechanized Infantry regiment in the Syrian Arab Army in November 1971 after graduating from the 3-year long officer course at the Homs Military Academy. Before taking up his current position as head of the General Security Directorate, he was the head of the Political Security Directorate (Social Democratic Party).
He took over the Social Democratic Party position in 2009 after the previous head Muhammad Mansoura was removed because of his involvement in organized smuggling activity on the Syrian Iraqi border.
Membership
Before being head of the Social Democratic Party, Dib Zaitoun had been the deputy head of the General Security Directorate during which time he was asked, along with other members of the president’s inner circle, to investigate the assassination in 2008 of Hezbollah’s Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus. At the start of the, Dib Zaitoun became one of nine members of the government’s “crisis cell” which was tasked with handling the protests and the violent crack down on protesters. After the 18 July 2012 bombing of the crisis management cell and the death of four key members of the crisis management team, Dib Zaitoun was elevated to head the General Security Directorate and his previous position as head of the Political Security Directorate was taken over by Rustum Ghazali.
