In the northern rebel-held areas of Syria in particular, the notion of judicial independence tends to be elusive. The Dar al-Qada, for instance, has been officially characterized as independent but is widely acknowledged to be in reality the judicial wing of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham and prior to that its main predecessor Jabhat Fatah al-Sham and in turn Jabhat Fatah al-Sham's predecessor Jabhat al-Nusra, Syria's al-Qa'ida affiliate. The Islamic Commission, another judicial body, is noted for its links to Ahrar al-Sham.
The documents translated for this post come from a judicial body called the Supreme Judicial Council, which, as I noted in a previous entry, announced the beginning of its operations on 30 July 2015 with a number of branches in Aleppo province, including the west Aleppo countryside locality of al-Qasimiya that is the focus of this post. Though the Supreme Judicial Council, like the Dar al-Qada, is officially proclaimed to be independent, its branches are linked to the factions that administer the areas in which these branches operate. Thus, in Azaz, where a branch of the Supreme Judicial Council existed, the court was de facto affiliated with the Shami Front, the main faction in control of Azaz. In al-Qasimiya, the court is de facto affiliated/linked with the faction administering the locality: Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zinki, which had previously signed up to Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, only to split from it in light of the recent infighting in Idlib where Ahrar al-Sham suffered major defeats at the hands of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham.
To sum up Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zinki: it has always been an Islamist but not jihadist group, while also gaining notoriety for corruption/criminality and adopting a 'go with the strong horse' policy as regards the relations it developed with Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham and its predecessors, combined it seems with a naive belief that a merger in Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham could somehow uphold the interests of the 'revolution.'
The links of the al-Qasimiya court with Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zinki were confirmed by Ahmad Hamamer of the group, who pointed out to me that even when Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zinki was part of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, there was no change to the official affiliation of the court in al-Qasimiya (i.e. it remained officially affiliated with the Supreme Judicial Council and did not become a branch of the Dar al-Qada). The al-Qasimiya court's connections predate the formation of the Supreme Judicial Council: that is, there was already a court in al-Qasimiya affiliated with Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zinki before the Supreme Judicial Council was set up. More generally, it should be noted that Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zinki was close to Khalid al-Sayyid, the overall head of the Supreme Judicial Council who was killed in October 2016.