BERLIN: Two Syrian men have been arrested in Germany on suspicion of membership in extremist groups, and one of them is suspected of involvement in a 2013 attack in eastern Syria in which more than 60 Shiite fighters and civilians were killed, prosecutors said Thursday.
The suspects, identified only as Amer A. and Basel O. in line with German privacy rules, were arrested on Wednesday, the federal prosecutors’ office said. Both are accused of membership in a foreign terrorist organization — Liwa Jund al Rahman, or Brigade of the Soldiers of the Merciful God, an armed rebel group that prosecutors said Amer A. formed in February 2013 and led.
Amer A. is also accused of committing war crimes by means of forced displacement and of membership in the Daesh group.
The war crimes charges relate to a June 2013 attack on Hatla, in Syria’s eastern Deir Ezzor province, that killed about 60 Shiite residents. At the time, the attack underlined the increasingly sectarian nature of Syria’s civil war. Prosecutors said the attack was carried out jointly by Liwa Jund al Rahman under Amer A.’s command and other jihadi groups.
Survivors of the attack were forced to flee to elsewhere in Syria or abroad “by intentionally stoking fears of death — also by means of arson and looting,” prosecutors said in a statement. “This forced displacement meant the end of all Shiite presence in Hatla.”
Amer A. joined IS in July 2014 and put his group under its command, prosecutors said. They said Basel O. took a “prominent military position” in his group by late 2013 and commanded units of the organization in battles with Syrian government forces in December that year and in April 2014, particularly at Deir Ezzor’s military airfield.
A judge on Wednesday ordered the two suspects held in custody pending a potential indictment.
Germany’s application of the rule of “universal jurisdiction,” allowing the prosecution of serious crimes committed abroad, led last year to the first conviction of a senior Syrian official for crimes against humanity.
And in February, a German court convicted a Palestinian man from Syria of a war crime and murder for launching a grenade into a crowd of civilians waiting for food in Damascus in 2014.
Germany arrests 2 Syrians, one of them accused of war crimes related to a deadly attack in 2013
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Germany arrests 2 Syrians, one of them accused of war crimes related to a deadly attack in 2013
- One of them suspected of involvement in a 2013 attack in eastern Syria in which more than 60 Shiite fighters and civilians were killed
Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s memoir recounts her journey after her son’s abduction by Hamas
- Random House announced Thursday that “When We See You Again” will be published April 26
- “I sat down to write my pain, and out poured loss, suffering, love, mourning, devotion, grief, adoration and fracturedness,” Goldberg-Polin said
NEW YORK: Rachel Goldberg-Polin, who has become known worldwide for her advocacy on behalf of her son and others abducted by Hamas-led militants on Oct. 7, 2023, has a memoir coming out this spring.
Random House, an imprint of Penguin Random House, announced Thursday that “When We See You Again” will be published April 26.
“I sat down to write my pain, and out poured loss, suffering, love, mourning, devotion, grief, adoration and fracturedness,” Goldberg-Polin, a Chicago-born educator who now lives in Jerusalem, said in a statement. “This book recounts the first steps of a million-mile odyssey that will take the rest of my life to walk on shattered feet.”
Goldberg-Polin also will narrate the audio edition of “When We See You Again.”
Her son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was attending a southern Israel music festival when militants loaded him and other hostages onto the back of a pickup truck. Rachel Goldberg-Polin and her husband, Jon, traveled the world calling for the release of Hersh and others, meeting with President Joe Biden and Pope Francis, speaking at the United Nations and appearing at protest rallies. Each morning, she would write down on a piece of masking tape the number of days her son had been in captivity and stick it on her chest.
She continued her efforts after Israeli officials announced in September 2024 that the bodies of her son and five others had been found in an underground tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip. Israeli forensics experts said they had been shot at close range. Tens of thousands crowded into a Jerusalem cemetery as Hersh was laid to rest.
According to Random House, Rachel Goldberg-Polin will tell her story in “raw, unflinching, deeply moving prose.”
“She describes grief from within the midst of suffering, giving voice to the broken as she pours her pain, love, and longing onto the page,” announcement reads in part. “It is a story of how we remember and how we persevere, of how we suffer and how we love.”
