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Summary Syria has said the air force pilot who defected was a traitor and demanded warplane from Jordan.
The pilot is considered a deserter and a traitor to his country, and to his military honour, and he will be sanctioned under military rules, state television quoted the defence ministry as saying.Relevant contacts have been made with the authorities in Jordan in order to recover the jet on which the traitor pilot made his getaway, the ministry added.Jordan granted political asylum to Colonel Hassan Merei al-Hamade Thursday, hours after he landed at a military air base in the kingdom in the first such air force defection in the 15-month revolt against Syrian President Bashar al-Assads regime.A Jordan Armed Forces statement said the Russian-made MiG-21 landed at 0745 GMT. According to Syrian state television, authorities had lost contact with a MiG-21 while it was on a training mission.George Sabra, spokesman for the Syrian National Council, the main exiled opposition group, said the pilot had defected.The pilot is from Deir Ezzor (in eastern Syria) and his family is known for its opposition to Assads regime, he added.More than 120,000 Syrians fleeing the violence in their homeland have taken refuge in Jordan, according to the Amman government. The United Nations has registered 20,000 of them.From the start of the anti-regime revolt in March last year, tens of thousands of Syrian soldiers have defected from the army, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human rights.Thousands have joined the rebel Free Syrian Army while others have fled the country or gone into hiding, the Britain-based watchdog says.
