THE HAGUE, Netherlands: Dutch authorities arrested a Syrian man on Tuesday who is suspected of having been a security chief for Daesh and Jabhat Al-Nusra extremist groups during Syria’s grinding civil war, prosecutors said.
“It is suspected that from his position at IS he also contributed to the war crimes that the organization committed in Syria,” the National Public Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.
The 37-year-old man, whose name wasn’t released, was detained in the small village of Arkel, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of the port city of Rotterdam, prosecutors said in a statement.
The man is suspected of holding “a managerial position in the security service of IS” from 2015-2018, prosecutors said. For two years prior to that, he allegedly carried out the same work for Jabhat Al-Nusra. Prosecutors say he held both functions “in and around the Yarmouk refugee camp” south of the Syrian capital, Damascus.
The suspect applied for asylum in the Netherlands in 2019 and later settled in Arkel, prosecutors said. He was scheduled to appear before an examining magistrate in The Hague on Feb. 20.
It wasn’t the first time Dutch authorities arrested a suspect from the Syrian conflict. Last year, a Dutch court convicted two Syrian brothers of holding senior roles in Jabhat Al-Nusra between 2011 and 2014.
Dutch police arrest suspected Daesh security chief
https://arab.news/mgm4h
Dutch police arrest suspected Daesh security chief
- The man is suspected of holding “a managerial position in the security service of IS”
UN chief calls on Israel to reverse NGOs ban in Gaza
- In November, authorities in Gaza said more than 70,000 people had been killed there since the war broke out
- Israel on Thursday suspended 37 foreign humanitarian organizations from accessing the Gaza Strip after they had refused to share lists of their Palestinian employees with government officials
UNITED NATIONS, United States: UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called on Friday for Israel to end a ban on humanitarian agencies that provided aid in Gaza, saying he was “deeply concerned” at the development.
Guterres “calls for this measure to be reversed, stressing that international non-governmental organizations are indispensable to life-saving humanitarian work and that the suspension risks undermining the fragile progress made during the ceasefire,” his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
“This recent action will further exacerbate the humanitarian crisis facing Palestinians,” he added.
Israel on Thursday suspended 37 foreign humanitarian organizations from accessing the Gaza Strip after they had refused to share lists of their Palestinian employees with government officials.
The ban includes Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which has 1,200 staff members in the Palestinian territories — the majority of whom are in Gaza.
NGOs included in the ban have been ordered to cease their operations by March 1.
Several NGOS have said the requirements contravene international humanitarian law or endanger their independence.
Israel says the new regulation aims to prevent bodies it accuses of supporting terrorism from operating in the Palestinian territories.
On Thursday, 18 Israel-based left-wing NGOs denounced the decision to ban their international peers, saying “the new registration framework violates core humanitarian principles of independence and neutrality.”
A fragile ceasefire has been in place since October, following a deadly war waged by Israel in response to Hamas’s unprecedented October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
In November, authorities in Gaza said more than 70,000 people had been killed there since the war broke out.
Nearly 80 percent of buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged by the war, according to UN data, leaving infrastructure decimated.
About 1.5 million of Gaza’s more than two million residents have lost their homes, said Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGO Network in Gaza.
