Many Syrians want justice for the crimes of the regime. Others Want Revenge.

Bashar Abdo had just returned home last month after four years in the Syrian army when a mob of neighbors and others armed with guns and knives crowded the front door accusing him of being a criminal of the ousted regime.

His sisters tried to stop the mob as he hid. But people came in and raided and found Mr. Abdo, 22, in the kitchen. They stabbed him before dragging him outside, as his sister Marwa also held on to him. There, he was shot.

The account, shared by Mr. Abdo, confirmed by local police in the northwestern city of Idlib. Video footage shared widely on Syrian social media and verified by the New York Times captured the horrific scene that followed: As Ms. Abdo holding his lifeless body, the neighbors continued to kick him. He begged them to stop, saying he was dead.

“This is your fate,” shouted another man. Another confirmed video shows the crowd shouting abuse after Mr. Abdo was tied around the neck of the car and dragged through the streets. It is not clear who recorded the video.

Ms. Abdo recalled those moments in an interview with The Times four days later. He has vowed revenge, a sign of the growing threat of a cycle of violent retaliation in the new Syria.

The country is emerging suddenly and unexpectedly from 13 years of civil war and more than fifty years under the Assad regime, which has been clinging to power through fear, torture and mass killings.

The killing of Mr. Abdo underscores the complex reckoning ahead in Syria, where wounds are ever-growing and anger is imminent. Many Syrians want accountability for crimes committed during the civil war. Others want revenge.

At least half a million Syrians were killed during the war, most of them in airstrikes by Syrian warplanes and helicopters or in prisons under torture or mass executions, according to Syrian rights groups. Many people are still missing.

Officials in Syria’s new interim government, led by the Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, are scrambling to set up courts and police to deal with decades of grievances. They urge citizens to forgive and not hold themselves accountable.

Ahmed al-Shara, the head of the coalition that overthrew the Assad government, said they would hunt down and prosecute high-ranking officials for crimes including murder, illegal detention, torture and killing of their own people, but that rank-and-file soldiers would receive amnesty.

In a recent interview, Mr. al-Shara said “justice must be sought through judges and the law. Not about individuals.”

“If the issues are left for everyone to take revenge, then we will change the law of the jungle,” he said.

Some Syrians say that while Mr al-Shara may choose to pardon, he will not. Last week, the mayor of Dumar, a suburb of Damascus, was killed by residents who accused him of reporting and arresting people under the previous government, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Mr. Abdo was a soldier – a conscript – in the Syrian army for four years. But his family said he tried to defect twice by not returning after being given a few days’ leave. Ultimately, he spent a month in a military prison for his efforts to leave and was released when rebels who toppled the Assad government seized the prison as part of their swift sweep of the country, multiple family members said.

At first he was afraid to come home, but when he heard that Mr al-Shara had said that soldiers like him would be given amnesty, he felt safe enough, his family said. Not long after he returned, the crowd was at the front door.

They accused him of reporting to his neighbors, which resulted in them being killed or arrested. The family said that they see many killers every day, but they have never faced them, they want to move to another place.

Responding to questions about the killing of police officers, the Idlib police, who are affiliated with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which has been ruling the province for years, said in a statement that they are investigating the killing but the Abdo family is “famous for killing.” by working with the government.”

But the police said “no one has the right to beat someone.” No one has been arrested so far.

Family members have denied any involvement with the regime. They also said that if his brother had been working as a law enforcement officer, he would not have returned home. They said he was only an infantry soldier.

“We swore and asserted that if the government does not get justice, we will get our own justice,” said Ms. Abdo, 32, with tears in her eyes. He punched the carpet that he and his sister spent days in the bath to get his brother’s blood out. There was still blood in the kitchen and on other walls.

“We will not allow his blood to be spilled without anyone answering,” he said.

Others use whatever means they can to try to avoid the cycle of revenge.

Muhammad al-Asmar, the new government’s information officer, said he sent a Google document to the residents of his village, Qabhani, Hama province, to submit any complaints about their residents. Mr. al-Asmar said he took this step after hearing that a few people the government was relying on to torture and threaten Syrians returned home after the fall of Mr. al-Assad.

“There was no response,” he said, because “people said, ‘I will take justice with my own hands.'”

However, he hopes that such an approach can be taken at the national level to curb vigilante justice.

Officials in the new justice department admit they were not ready to take control of much of the country when they launched the attack on November 27. Efforts to calm the situation now seem to come in the form of public statements or suggestive sermons. to imams urging people to exercise self-control.

“To be honest, we are under a lot of weight and there will be irregularities,” said Ahmad Hilal, the chief judge at the court in Aleppo. People who are angry about the crimes under Assad “don’t want to wait for the courts to act — they want to take law and justice into their own hands.”

The struggle against mob justice is difficult because in every city and town, Syrians who may be accused of such crimes are returning home.

When Assad’s government fell last month, Alaa Khateeb returned to his hometown, Taftanaz, in the countryside of Idlib province. His family soon began to tell people that he had stopped fighting for years and then left twice to show that he was not a willing participant in Mr al-Assad’s army.

“I know I didn’t do anything,” said Mr. Khateeb, 25, a married father of three, on a recent day on the outskirts of the village, working to repair a relative’s house that was taken over by the Syrian army.

Despite the protest of Mr. Khateeb, you are facing a cloud of suspicion. Even the lower ranks of the military are accused of condoning crime – whether that’s true or not.

One of the relatives of Mr. Khateeb, Salah Khateeb, 67, who owns a produce market in the area, was not sure if he would say “hello” when he heard that his second cousin had returned to Taftanaz.

“He is my relative and he asked me if I should accept him or not,” he said. “Some may even think of revenge.”

Muhammad Haj Kadour, Jacob Roubai again Nader Ibrahim reporting contributed.