STOCKHOLM: A former Syrian army general will appear before a Stockholm court over his alleged role in war crimes committed in Syria in 2012, according to the indictment seen Wednesday by AFP.
Mohammed Hamo, 65, who lives in Sweden, is accused of having participated in the call for indiscriminate strikes in and around the cities of Hama and Homs between January 1 and July 20, 2012.
The strikes were carried out by air and land without distinction — as required by international law — between civilian and military targets, the indictment states.
They also failed to respect the principle of proportionality to achieve the military goal sought, prosecutor Karolina Wieslander said. Hamo, given his role at the time, is accused of being complicit in these crimes.
He had particularly made decisions related to arming operational units and was responsible in that period for implementing various military operations.
Seven civil parties, several of them Syrians from the cities in question, will testify during the trial.
Among them is a British photographer who was injured during one of the strikes.
The war in Syria between Bashar Assad’s regime and armed opposition groups including Islamic State, triggered in 2011 by the repression of peaceful anti-government protests, has killed more than half a million people.
Former Syrian general to face Swedish court for alleged war crimes
https://arab.news/9mzyy
Former Syrian general to face Swedish court for alleged war crimes
- Mohammed Hamo, 65, who lives in Sweden, is accused of having participated in the call for indiscriminate strikes
- The strikes were carried out by air and land without distinction between civilian and military targets
Police suspect suicide bomber behind Nigeria’s deadly mosque blast
- Nigeria police said Thursday that they suspected a suicide bomber was behind the blast that killed several worshippers in a mosque on Christmas eve in the country’s northeastern Borno state
MAIDUGURI: Nigeria police said Thursday that they suspected a suicide bomber was behind the blast that killed several worshippers in a mosque on Christmas eve in the country’s northeastern Borno state.
A police spokesman put the death toll at five, with 35 wounded. A witness on Wednesday told AFP that eight people were killed.
The bomb went off inside the crowded Al-Adum Juma’at Mosque at Gamboru market in the capital city of Maiduguri, as Muslim faithful gathered for evening prayers around 6:00 p.m. (1700 GMT), according to witnesses and the police.
“An unknown individual, whom we suspect to be a member of a terrorist group, entered inside the mosque, and while prayer was ongoing, we recorded an explosion,” police spokesman Nahum Daso told journalists.
Daso said in a statement late on Wednesday that the “incident may have been a suicide bombing, based on the recovery of fragments of a suspected suicide vest and witness statements.”
Police officials have been deployed to markets, worship centers and other public places in the wake of the blast.
Nigeria has been battling a jihadist insurgency since 2009 by jihadist groups Boko Haram and an offshoot, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), in a conflict that has killed at least 40,000 and displaced around two million from their homes in the northeast, according to the UN.
Although the conflict has been largely limited to the northeastern region, jihadist attacks have been recorded in other parts of the west African nation.
Maiduguri itself — once the scene of nightly gunbattles and bombings — has been calm in recent years, with the last major attack recorded in 2021.
