{"id":1462,"date":"2019-12-19T10:26:48","date_gmt":"2019-12-19T10:26:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/m-syria-d.com\/en\/?p=1462"},"modified":"2019-12-19T10:37:18","modified_gmt":"2019-12-19T10:37:18","slug":"they-made-me-choose-between-buying-his-body-and-burning-it-syrian-opposition-factions-offering-kurdish-bodies-for-sale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/m-syria-d.com\/en\/?p=1462","title":{"rendered":"They made me choose between buying his body and burning it … “Syrian opposition factions offering Kurdish bodies for sale”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For fifteen continuous days,\nthe family of Suleiman Ahmed, the seventy years old displaced person from the\ncity of Ras al-Ain (Northeastern Syria), did not calm down, waiting for the\narrival of its eldest son, Sardar, who ventured to return home after the\nTurkish army and Syrian opposition factions occupied his city within the\n“Spring of Peace” process launched by Ankara against Kurdish fighters\nlast October<\/strong>.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sardar did not retrurn i. And\nhere is his mother, Shaha, despite the weakness, sadness, and inability to\nleave the bed,  narrates to Raseef 22 the\ndetails of her son’s death about a month ago at the hands of who are called,\nAbu Musa’ab al-Dairi, a fighter within “Ahrar al-Sharqyia”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shaha says : ” On the\nnumber of his father’s phone, we received an audio message via WhatsApp from a\nTurkish number in which someone informs us that he killed my son and kept his\nbody to sell it to us” .<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Close to the bereaved mother,\nthe father continues the story about what happened, adding: “I asked the\nkillers to send a picture of Sardar’s body in the hope that it would not be\nhim, but I knew him even though they separated his head from his body<\/strong>“.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He continues”His body\nwas stained in blood and mutilated, but I knew him from his blue shirt, jeans,\nand his shoes that he was wearing when we left.” He added by explaining,\n“Through a voice call, the killer introduced himself to me as  Abu Musab, a fighter within Ahrar al-Sharqiya,\nand offered me to buy my son’s body for $ 7,000 USD, or that he will burn it”.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bodies for sale via WhatsApp<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Upon reviewing the audio recordings\nthat Abu Musab sent to  Sardar’s family,\nit appears that he keeps six bodies of girls and young people at a petrol\nstation called “Hamdo” at the entrance to the city of Ras Al-Ain, and\nas he claims that after searching the mobile phones of his victims, he tries to\ncontact their families after sending their photos to them and threatening them\nthat he would burn the bodies if they refuse to buy them<\/strong>.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sardar’s father complains\nthat his 35 years old son is the father of two daughters 9 years old and 6 years-old\n who are still waiting for his return\nfrom Ras Al-Ain as he was inspecting the house to bring winter clothes for the\nfamily.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anxiety over the loss of other\nfamily members prompted Suleimon to cancel the idea of \u200b\u200bbuying his son’s body.\nHe says: “I do not have $ 7,000 after being forced to leave our homes and\nproperties in the city with the intensification of battles and aerial\nbombardment, and even if I have the required amount I will not venture to send\nhis brother to receive his body, they may seize the money and kill my other son\nand offer his remains to me for sale again”.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sardar’s body is no exception<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the scarcity of\ninformation received about the number of victims and those whose bodies were\ndisplayed for sale to their relatives, media activist, Rana Al-Ahmadi, who\ncomes from the city of Hasakeh, revealed to Raseef 22 that she documented three\ncases of offering to sell the bodies of a twenty-year-old girl and two men from\nSelouk, Tal Abyad and Ras Al-Ain<\/strong>.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Al-Ahmadi says: \u201cMany people\nwere killed due to the violent military and air offensive carried out by Turkey\nand they were not able to escape, some of them returned to inspect their home,\nbut were killed by the Syrian factions. Through \nfollowing the shelters for the displaced in camps, schools and inside\nthe cities of Raqqa, Hasakeh, Qamishli and others, we trusted three cases. The\nfamilies of the victims said : The killers demanded payments ranging from 5 to\n8 thousand dollars<\/strong>“.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Al-Ahmadi, the information\nreported about displaced people and activists indicates “an unfortunate\noutbreak of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearance, rape and mutilation\nof bodies, some of them belonging to women. Turkey has turned the safe area\nthat it has set up in Ras al-Ain and Tel Abyad into an inferno by displacing\nits indigenous population and committing war crimes against the  rest who remained there.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is noteworthy that the\nSyrian National Army, which is affiliated with “Ahrar al-Sharqiya”,\nhad called on very specific occasions not to publish pictures of the bodies or\nto mutilate them, after the video of mutilating of the body of the Kurdish\nfighter, Barin, was spread – although SNA denied his responsibility about such\ncrime.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On another occasion, when the\nvideo of the fighter of the Women’s Protection Units ,Cicek Kobani, spread, SNA\napologized under international pressure and said it was individual behavior. As\nfor the rumors about the sale of the bodies, there is no comment from SNA on\nthe matter.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For his part, journalist writer\nMustafa Abdi monitored cases in which the militants send video clips of the\nbodies of the victims to the families of the victims, and they refuse to hand\nover the bodies to their families only after receiving money from them<\/strong>.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mustafa Abdi, a journalist,\nand is also the director of a local monitoring group interested in documenting\nviolations in Syria, said: “We obtained video clips showing opposition\nfighters celebrating in front of the corpses of women, children and military\npersonnel”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a phone call to Raseef 22,\nAbdi said that a Kurdish journalist named Widad Fateh, a father of two children\nand a documentary filmmaker, had been killed in an airstrike in Ras al-Ain, his\nfamily became aware of the matter after the opposition gunmen sent a video to\nhis mother via WhatsApp showing the body of Widdad mutilated.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“<\/strong>Safe zone is not safe<\/strong>“<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a report published on\nNovember 27, Human Rights Watch notes violations against civilians and\nextrajudicial executions in the safe area<\/strong>.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sarah Leah Whitson, director\nof the Middle East division at HRW, described the proposed safe area from\nTurkey as \u201cunsafe, as armed groups that Turkey uses to manage the safe area\ncontinue to commit violations against civilians and such groups do discrimination\nagainst people on ethnic grounds, executions, looting of citizens\u2019 property,\nand preventing them from returning to their homes<\/strong>“.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Field executions and mutilation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“<\/strong>The Syrian armed groups, backed by\nTurkey, violated the four Geneva Conventions, their Additional Protocols and\nInternational Humanitarian Law governing civilian life,” says the joint\nhead of the Human Rights Office in the city of Amouda, Walida Hassan<\/strong>.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hassan explains that the Peace\nDocumentation Office of the operation of ” Spring of Peace” documented\nfiles on body mutilation, especially for women, and boast about this through\nvideo clips and the armed groups offer sales of civilian corpses to extort their\nfamilies in exchange for money.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 <\/strong>She notes that the office has uploaded war crime\ndocumentation files committed by armed groups to UN, the International Court of\nJustice and European organizations concerned with human rights.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The crimes and\nviolations committed by the Turkish state and the factions loyal to it amount\nto war crimes and crimes against humanity that aim to demographic change in the\ndemographic structure through massacres, ethnic genocide, and forced\ndisplacement,” the human rights official says.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The UN human rights office\nsees Ankara responsible for “the arbitrary executions carried out against\nthe Kurds by Syrian opposition factions loyal to Turkey and demanded an\nimmediate, impartial and independent investigation and arresting of the\nperpetrators”.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A spokesman for the Office of\nthe High Commissioner for Human Rights, Robert Colville, said that video clips\nshowed the executions of three detained Kurds carried out by fighters of the\n” Ahrar al-Sharqia” group linked to Turkey on the highway between\nHasakeh and Manbij on October 12, blaming Turkey for the responsibility<\/strong>.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Financial ransom<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In turn, the Syrian\nObservatory for Human Rights revealed that a fighter in the Syriac Military\nCouncil Forces affiliated with the Syrian Democratic Forces was killed while\nthree others were captured during the battles in the countryside of Tel Tamir\nwith the factions loyal to Turkey, and that the latter demanded the military\ncouncil for $ 40,000 in exchange for release the corpse and the three prisoners.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite warnings by human rights groups, domestic and international to Turkey that the military factions continue to commit violations against the people, no steps have been taken to stop them or hold them accountable, amid accusations by the people of the region to the Turkish authorities of tacitly agreeing to these practices.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lamar Arkandi’s journalistic investigation of the violations and abuses committed by the Turkish state and its related factions in northern and eastern Syria.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For fifteen continuous days, the family of Suleiman Ahmed, the seventy years old displaced person from the city of Ras al-Ain (Northeastern Syria), did not calm down, waiting for the arrival of its eldest son, Sardar, who ventured to return home after the Turkish army and Syrian opposition factions occupied his city within the “Spring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/m-syria-d.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/m-syria-d.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/m-syria-d.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/m-syria-d.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/m-syria-d.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1462"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/m-syria-d.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1466,"href":"https:\/\/m-syria-d.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1462\/revisions\/1466"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/m-syria-d.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/m-syria-d.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/m-syria-d.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/m-syria-d.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}