BEIRUT: Nearly 300 Syrians suspected of belonging to Daesh have been freed because they have “no blood on their hands,” Kurdish authorities who were holding them said.
Their release was announced late Saturday by the semi-autonomous Kurdish administration of northern Syria, which said in a statement that 283 Syrians had been set free.
Tribal chiefs and other local officials had lobbied for their release.
The statement said they were men who “have no Syrian blood on their hands,” suggesting that they did not take part in any fighting.
“They had lost their way ... violated the traditions of the Syrian society and the law, and some of them had been deceived ... but they remain our Syrian children,” it said.
Releasing them is a gesture of “cooperation, fraternity and clemency,” said the statement posted on the website of the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
The prisoners were released in several areas of northern Syria held by Kurds, including the city of Raqqa, which was the de facto Syrian capital of the Daesh “caliphate,” the statement added.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said it was not the first release of Daesh-linked prisoners by Kurdish authorities, but the number was particularly large this time.
The SDF are holding hundreds of alleged foreign militants, as well as women and children related to suspected Daesh members.
Syria’s Kurds have long urged their home countries to take the detainees back, but nations have been reluctant.
Kurds have played a key role in battling Daesh in Syria. The SDF have now cornered the militants in their last stretch of territory near the border with Iraq in a final bid to flush them out.
In November 2013, Kurdish groups in Syria announced the establishment of a semi-autonomous region divided into three zones, following victories against rebels and militants.
Syria’s Kurds set free nearly 300 Daesh-linked Syrians
Syria’s Kurds set free nearly 300 Daesh-linked Syrians
- Tribal chiefs and other local officials had lobbied for their release
- The prisoners were released in several areas of northern Syria held by Kurds
Syria says detained senior Daesh jihadist in Damascus
- The arrest came less than two weeks after a December 13 attack killed two US soldiers
DAMASCUS: Syrian authorities have arrested a senior Daesh group official in the Damascus region in a joint operation with a US-led international coalition, a security official said on Wednesday.
Taha Al-Zoubi, also known as Abu Omar Tabiya, an Daesh leader in Damascus, was detained with several of his men, General Ahmad Al-Dalati was reported as saying by state news agency SANA.
The arrest came less than two weeks after a December 13 attack killed two US soldiers and a US civilian that Washington said was carried out by a lone Daesh gunman in central Syria’s Palmyra.
“Our specialized units, in cooperation with the General Intelligence Directorate and and International Coalition forces, carried out a precise security operation targeting” an Daesh hideout, Dalati said.
On December 20, a Syria monitor said that five Daesh members were killed in US strikes in retaliation for the December 13 attack.
It was the first such incident since the overthrow of longtime ruler Bashar Assad in December last year, and Syrian authorities said the perpetrator was a security forces member who was due to be fired for his “extremist Islamist ideas.”
