Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, November 15, 2019. Photo: Screenshot/Russia 24 video/Syrian Presidency’s FB
DAMASCUS, Syria,— Syrian President Bashar Assad said in remarks published Wednesday that members of the Islamic State group held in the country will stand trial in local courts specialized in terrorism cases.
Assad made his comments in an interview with Paris Match when asked about a deal with a Kurdish-led force that would eventually bring their areas under government control.
The Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD and its powerful military wing YPG/YPJ, considered the most effective fighting force against IS in Syria and U.S. has provided them with arms over the past years. The YPG, which is the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces SDF forces -the de facto army of the autonomous Kurdish region- has seized swathes of Syria from Islamic State.
The Kurdish forces expelled the Islamic State from its last patch of territory in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz in March 2019.
11,000 Kurdish male and female fighters had been killed in five years of war to eliminate the Islamic State “caliphate” that once covered an area the size of Great Britain in Syria and Iraq.
Syria’s Kurds have detained thousands of local and foreign fighters suspected of fighting for Islamic State, as well as thousands of related women and children.
Syrian Kurds are holding more than 10,000 Islamic State militants, mostly Syrians and Iraqis, including some 2,000 foreigners.
Abandoned by their U.S. allies, the Kurds turned to Assad and Russia for protection and over the past weeks Syrian and Russian forces have moved into areas once held by Kurds.
Syrian authorities are holding hundreds of IS members who were captured in battles between government forces and the extremists over the past years in different parts of the country. No public announcements have been made about any of them being put on trial, unlike in neighboring Iraq where thousands of IS members, many of them foreigners, have been sentenced to death.
Some human rights groups have expressed concern about government troops taking over IS detention centers currently run by the U.S.-allied Kurds.
Assad said: “Every terrorist in the areas controlled by the Syrian state will be subject to Syrian law and Syrian law is clear concerning terrorism. We have courts specialized in terrorism and they will be prosecuted.” He did not elaborate.
Most European countries are refusing to take back their citizens and a number of French IS prisoners received death sentences in trials in Iraq.
U.S. troops last month killed IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a commando operation in northwestern Syria.
Al-Baghdadi, the shadowy leader of IS who became arguably the world’s most wanted man, died after U.S. special operators with joint intelligence work with Syrian Kurds cornered him during a raid in Syria’s Idlib province, Trump said. Trump thanked the Syrian government after the operation in which al-Baghdadi was killed.
When asked why Trump thanked the Syrian government, among others, after al-Baghdadi was killed, Assad said: “I always laugh when this question is raised, because the more important question which should be asked is: was al-Baghdadi really killed or not? And did this “fantastic play” staged by the Americans take place in reality?”
Asked again why Trump thanked him, Assad said: “It’s one of Trump’s cute jokes. It’s a joke.”
The Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD and its powerful military wing YPG/YPJ, considered the most effective fighting force against IS in Syria and U.S. has provided them with arms over the past years. The YPG, which is the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces SDF forces, has seized swathes of Syria from Islamic State.
The Kurdish forces expelled the Islamic State from its last patch of territory in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz in March 2019.
11,000 Kurdish male and female fighters had been killed in five years of war to eliminate the Islamic State “caliphate” that once covered an area the size of Great Britain in Syria and Iraq.
Syria’s Kurds have established a semi-autonomous region in northeastern Syria during the country’s eight-year war.
In 2013, the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD — the political branch of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) — has established three autonomous Cantons of Jazeera, Kobani and Afrin and a Kurdish government across Syrian Kurdistan in 2013. On March 17, 2016, Kurdish and Arab authorities announced the creation of a “federal region” made up of those semi-autonomous regions in Syrian Kurdistan.
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