Recent Appearances...

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Recent Appearances...

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Syria Army Finds Mass Grave near Damascus

2020-02-18

[AnNahar] The Syrian army has discovered a mass grave containing around 70 bodies in a former rebel bastion near Damascus, the state news agency reported Monday.

SANA said the victims found in the Eastern Ghouta region were "civilians and security personnel who were executed by terrorist groups".

The densely populated semi-urban area just east of Damascus was controlled by rebel and jihadist factions for around six years until government forces retook it in 2018 after a long and bloody siege.

The state news agency quoted a police brass hat as saying that the killings were believed to have taken place between 2012 and 2014.

The mass grave, near Eastern Ghouta's main town of Douma, is in an area formerly controlled by rebel group Jaish al-Islam
...Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) was established by Zahran Alloush, the son of Saudi-based religious scholar Abdullah Mohammed Alloush, after Syrian authorities released him from prison in mid-2011 where he had been serving time for his Salafist activism. The group claimed responsibility for carrying out the July 2012 Damascus bombing that killed Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, Deputy Defense Minister Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani. It was a driving force behind actions in the Damascus region. It cooperated and conducted joint operations with al-Nusra. In Sptember 2013 Saudi Arabia engineered Liwa al-Islam's merger with fifty other more or less Salafist groups as a counterweight to al-Nusra, which the Learned Elders of Islam considered was growing too powereful...
The siege of Eastern Ghouta ended with a devastating regime offensive that saw at least 1,700 civilians killed before a deal was struck that saw fighters and civilians evacuated to northern Syria.

According to the officials quoted by SANA, many of the victims, among them a women, had been bound and executed with a gunshot to the head.

AFP was not immediately able to verify the information provided by the state news agency.

Swathes of Eastern Ghouta were completely leveled during the siege and the regime offensive, but some residents have returned despite the lack of reconstruction.

Many mass graves have been found in Syria in recent years, mainly in areas formerly controlled by the Islamic State

...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
jihadist group.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 380,000 people have been killed since the start of the war in 2011.

Thousands are still missing and Human Rights Watch last week encouraged the authorities in Syria to investigate their fate.

Link

Europe

Meet The 'Moderate Rebel' Just Arrested In France For War Crimes In Syria

2020-02-03

More on the gentleman whose arrest was reported yesterday.

[i24 News via Zero] Over the past couple of years European capitals have been pursuing war crimes charges against anti-Assad 'opposition' fighters once widely referred to in Western press as "moderate rebels". In an irony which is certain to be ignored by the same US mainstream media that shilled for them in the first place, the CIA and Pentagon had for years through the first half of the war backed the anti-Assad jihadist insurgency with millions of dollars and weapons.

One such so-called 'moderate rebel' arrested days ago in France is Islam Alloush ‐ a former leader and spokesman for Jaish al-Islam
...Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) was established by Zahran Alloush, the son of Saudi-based religious scholar Abdullah Mohammed Alloush, after Syrian authorities released him from prison in mid-2011 where he had been serving time for his Salafist activism. The group claimed responsibility for carrying out the July 2012 Damascus bombing that killed Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, Deputy Defense Minister Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani. It was a driving force behind actions in the Damascus region. It cooperated and conducted joint operations with al-Nusra. In September 2013 Saudi Arabia engineered Liwa al-Islam's merger with fifty other more or less Salafist groups as a counterweight to al-Nusra, which the Learned Elders of Islam considered was growing too powerful...
, which also happens to be the very Saudi-backed group that had been in control of eastern Ghouta outside of Damascus at the time of the alleged April 2018 Douma "chemical attack".

According to the AFP, Alloush was detained in the city of Marseille following criminal complaints filed last year by human rights groups, which detailed a history of war crimes, torture and kidnapping against civilians and activists.

He "is among the senior officials of Jaish Al Islam," who led some 20,000 combatants in the jihadist militia, and "caused terror to reign in the rebel areas it controlled, mainly in eastern Ghouta, which it lost control in April 2018," according to a joint press release issued by the human rights groups which helped track his whereabouts to the south of France.

Not only had he been freely moving about Europe for what appears to be at least a year... it gets better: this brutal jihadist warlord and terrorists was actually in France on a student visa.

From the i24 article, the gentleman’s nom de guerre:

According to a joint press release by three NGOs, FIDH (International Federation for Human Rights), SCM (Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression) and LDH (League for Human Rights), the man arrested was identified as Islam Alloush, also known as Majdi Mustafa Nameh.

Zero link found here.

Zero Hedge has more photos of the blue-eyed, shaven-head brute and a tweet of his internship application — he’s apparently been studying political science and international relations in Istanbul.

Link

Europe

France arrests Syrian Islamist on war crimes charges

2020-02-02

[AlAhram] A senior member of Syrian Islamist gang Jaish al-Islam
...Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) was established by Zahran Alloush, the son of Saudi-based religious scholar Abdullah Mohammed Alloush, after Syrian authorities released him from prison in mid-2011 where he had been serving time for his Salafist activism. The group claimed responsibility for carrying out the July 2012 Damascus bombing that killed Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, Deputy Defense Minister Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani. It was a driving force behind actions in the Damascus region. It cooperated and conducted joint operations with al-Nusra. In September 2013 Saudi Arabia engineered Liwa al-Islam's merger with fifty other more or less Salafist groups as a counterweight to al-Nusra, which the Learned Elders of Islam considered was growing too powerful...
implicated in the disappearance of a prominent activist in 2013 has been arrested in La Belle France and charged with war crimes and torture, a judicial source told AFP on Friday.

The suspect, a former front man of the group who is in his early thirties, was in La Belle France on an Erasmus student visa

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Jaish Islam denies preparing for new battle in Aleppo

2018-09-13

[AlMasdar] Jaish al-Islam

...Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) was established by Zahran Alloush, the son of Saudi-based religious scholar Abdullah Mohammed Alloush, after Syrian authorities released him from prison in mid-2011 where he had been serving time for his Salafist activism. The group claimed responsibility for carrying out the July 2012 Damascus bombing that killed Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, Deputy Defense Minister Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani. It was a driving force behind actions in the Damascus region. It cooperated and conducted joint operations with al-Nusra. In Sptember 2013 Saudi Arabia engineered Liwa al-Islam's merger with fifty other more or less Salafist groups as a counterweight to al-Nusra, which the Learned Elders of Islam considered was growing too powereful...
rebel group denied it is preparing for a new battle in northern Syria as the Syrian Army mulls full-scale offensive.

“The reports released by SOHR about going for a new battle in Aleppo are groundless”, Jaish al-Islam spokesman, Hamza Bayraqdar, said.

Bayraqdar added that the monitor group didn’t cited an official source from Jaish al-Islam, rather its reports were merely speculations.

“We just released footage for the group’s general commander, Issam Bwaidani, while touring our fighters’ positions in northern countryside of Aleppo”, he commented.

Last week, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed it had obtained ‘credible information’ about recently-made deployments for Jaish al-Islam fighters.

Thousands of the Saudi-backed militants were evacuated with their families to Syria’s north coming from East Ghouta region as per a deal with the Syrian government.

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Syria rebel group accused of abduction, murder of key activist

2018-08-16

[Al Jazeera] Since the conflict in Syria began in 2011, the government has been accused of "forcibly disappearing" tens of thousands of people, many of them peaceful protesters who later died or were killed in detention.

Armed opposition groups have also been responsible for the disappearance of activists in areas they control, but on a much smaller scale.

Among them was rights activist Razan Zaitouneh - one of the faces of the uprising against Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad
Oppressor of the Syrians and the Lebs...
Zaitouneh, who founded the Violation Documentation Centre, was wanted by the Syrian government for her role in peaceful protests calling for its downfall.

Her centre kept track of atrocities and abuses committed not just by the government but the armed opposition, too.

In December 2013, Zaitouneh, along with three of her colleagues, including her husband, disappeared after being taken at gunpoint from their office in Douma.

Back then, the town on the outskirts of the Syrian capital, Damascus, was surrounded by government forces but it was under the control of the opposition.

Fellow activists say Jaish al-Islam

...Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) was established by Zahran Alloush, the son of Saudi-based religious scholar Abdullah Mohammed Alloush, after Syrian authorities released him from prison in mid-2011 where he had been serving time for his Salafist activism. The group claimed responsibility for carrying out the July 2012 Damascus bombing that killed Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, Deputy Defense Minister Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani. It was a driving force behind actions in the Damascus region. It cooperated and conducted joint operations with al-Nusra. In Sptember 2013 Saudi Arabia engineered Liwa al-Islam's merger with fifty other more or less Salafist groups as a counterweight to al-Nusra, which the Learned Elders of Islam considered was growing too powereful...
(Army of Islam), arguably the most powerful group at the time, saw 36-year-old Zaitouneh as a threat. She promoted a civil administration and a secular state which were not in line with the group's ideology.

"We, the Violations Documentation Centre in Syria, are sure the Army of Islam kidnapped them," said Mazen Darwish, a Europe-based Syrian lawyer and a colleague of Zaitouneh.

"We have proof that Razan was in their jails and under their direct supervision. This was until the beginning of 2017 as we were able to trace her movements. Regrettably after the beginning of 2017, information was cut and we have no knowledge about Razan."

Jaish al-Islam, however, denied any involvement or knowledge of the kidnap.

"Jaish al-Islam was not the only faction in Douma at the time," Hamza Bayraqdar, a spokesperson for the group said.

"There was in the entire region forces from the Martyrs of Douma, forces of the Ghouta rising, the Islamic Union of the Levant and even the Nusra Front were present."

Earlier this year, Jaish al-Islam was forced to surrender besieged Douma to government forces.

Before leaving the area, Jaish al-Islam began releasing detainees from the Tawbeh prison. Witnesses say Razan and her colleagues were held there.

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Defeated Jaish Islam group re-establishes itself in north Aleppo

2018-08-06

[ALMASDARNEWS] Rebel fighters of Eastern Ghouta are now building new bases in northern Syria amid conflicting reports of an upcoming offensive on Idlib province.

Jaish al-Islam rebel group is re-establishing itself in northern Aleppo through building its own bases and barracks on lands it bought just outside al-Bab and Jarabulus cities in the country’s north.

Jaish al-Islam
...Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) was established by Zahran Alloush, the son of Saudi-based religious scholar Abdullah Mohammed Alloush, after Syrian authorities released him from prison in mid-2011 where he had been serving time for his Salafist activism. The group claimed responsibility for carrying out the July 2012 Damascus bombing that killed Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, Deputy Defense Minister Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani. It was a driving force behind actions in the Damascus region. It cooperated and conducted joint operations with al-Nusra. In Sptember 2013 Saudi Arabia engineered Liwa al-Islam's merger with fifty other more or less Salafist groups as a counterweight to al-Nusra, which the Learned Elders of Islam considered was growing too powereful...
rebel group is re-establishing itself in northern Aleppo through building its own bases and barracks on lands it bought just outside al-Bab and Jarabulus cities in the country’s north.

Since its arrival in northern Syria, the Saudi-backed group began to buy all kinds of weapons from smaller FSA-affiliated groups. Scores of those minor factions even joined Jaish al-Islam which attempts to establish itself as one of the main armed factions in the north.

Jaish al-Islam Death Eaters ‐ along with other rebel groups ‐ were evacuated from their strongholds in East Ghouta region last May.

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Infighting looms in Idlib as Nusra, former Ghouta militants trade blows, Kurds may team up with Syrian Army

2018-07-31

[ALMASDARNEWS] Former forces of Evil of Eastern Ghouta and the al-Qaeda-linked group in Idlib have been recently engaged in a series of arrest campaigns; portending a new bloody infighting between the two old foes.

Having undergone an all-out regrouping and reorganizing process, Jaish al-Islam

set up checkpoints and enjugged
Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try!
several Jaish al-Islam fighters. Up to 50 forces of Evil from both warring parties have been arrested during the last two months.

The recent escalated tensions might evolve to a full-scale infighting similar to those broke out earlier among various rival Death Eater factions.

However,
facts are stubborn; statistics are more pliable...
local sources spoke about a tendency among Nusra leadership to cool things off to avert a potential war in which Syria Liberation Front (the arch enemy of HTS) will definitely join the fight alongside Jaish al-Islam.

Syrian Army, Kurdish forces to potentially team up for Idlib offensive

[ALMASDARNEWS] A source from the Syrian military told al-Masdar News last night that the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) may potentially team up for the government’s upcoming Idlib offensive.

According to the source in Damascus, the Syrian Democratic Council (SDF) met with the Syrian government last week to discuss a number of topics, including potential military cooperation.

The source said that the SDC, the political arm of the SDF, offered to take part in the Idlib offensive and help limit ~~The Sick Man of Europe~~ Turkey
...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire....
’s sphere of influence in the northern part of the country.

While nothing is official, the source said that if the military cooperation does happen in Idlib, it be an imperative step towards reconciliation and a political settlement in northern Syria.

The Idlib Governorate offensive that is referenced above has to deal with the Syrian Arab Army’s upcoming operation to retake the strategic district of Jisr al-Shughour in the southwestern part of the province.

Jisr al-Shughour and the al-Ghaab Plain located south of the district are two imperative areas in northwest Syria that are used as launching points for jihadist attacks against the government forces.

Furthermore, the ~~Ottoman~~ Turkish border-crossing near Jisr al-Shughour has allowed the jihadist rebels of the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham

to deeply entrench themselves in this part of northwest Syria.

Turkey will not likely approve of the Syrian Army’s upcoming northern Latakia and Jisr al-Shughour offensives, which could escalate the situation in northwest Syria if the two parties encounter one another.

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

UN: Syrian forces committed war crimes in Eastern Ghouta

2018-06-21

[Al Jazeera] Forces loyal to Syria's government committed what amounted to crimes against humanity, including deliberately starving civilians, during the siege of Eastern Ghouta, UN Sherlocks said on Wednesday.

The five-year siege, on the outskirts of the capital, ended in April when Damascus regained control of the rebel enclave.

"Following the end of the longest running siege in modern history, the UN Commission of Inquiry [on Syria] has condemned this method of warfare in Syria as barbaric," the UN Sherlocks said in a statement.

The commission, tasked by the UN Human Rights Council in March to urgently investigate recent events in Eastern Ghouta, released a 23-page report filled with horrific details of civilian suffering.

"It is completely abhorrent that besieged civilians were indiscriminately attacked, and systematically denied food and medicine," commission head Paulo Pinheiro said.

As pro-government forces dramatically escalated their campaign to recapture Eastern Ghouta between February and April this year, they used tactics that were "largely unlawful in nature," the report said.

The tactics "aimed at punishing the inhabitants of Eastern Ghouta and forcing the population, collectively, to surrender or starve," it added.

The report described thousands of desperate people holed up for months in squalid basements with dwindling food rations and few, if any, sanitation facilities as bombs and missiles rained down.

According to the report "certain acts perpetrated by pro-government forces, including the deliberate starvation of the civilian population as a method of warfare, amount to the crime against humanity of inhumane acts causing serious mental and physical suffering."

'War crimes'
The Sherlocks slammed the widespread use of sieges throughout Syria's seven-year conflict, which has killed more than 350,000 people.

"Hundreds of thousands of Syrian women, men and children countrywide have suffered for too long the perverse and long-lasting effects of this medieval form of warfare," the report said.

The UN's Syria commission, set up in 2011 shortly after the civil war began, has repeatedly accused the warring parties of crimes.

In its latest report, the commission also faulted armed opposition groups like Jaish al-Islam

for committing "war crimes" by launching "indiscriminate attacks" on Damascus, and killing and maiming hundreds of civilians.

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Former Jaish al-Islam leader stole millions, launches businesses in Turkey & Saudi Arabia

2018-05-07

[PRESSTV] Former head of the political body of the so-called Jaish al-Islam

...an adherent of takfir wal hijra, an offshoot of Salafism that regards everybody who doesn't agree with them as apostates who must be killed...
terrorist outfits in Syria, and used the money to buy restaurants and commercial centers in ~~The Sick Man of Europe~~ Turkey
...the decaying remnant of the Ottoman Empire....
and Soddy Arabia
...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face...
The Arabic-language Damascus Now news website reported on Sunday that Mohammed Alloush has appropriated some $47 million over the past few years, and hid it from the leaders of the terrorist organization.

The report added that Alloush then used the money to purchase real estates in Turkey and in Saudi Arabia, including Ewan Restaurant, car washes and body shops in Istanbul besides Rebou al-Sham Restaurant and three textile markets run by Bilal Oyoun in the Saudi capital city of Riyadh.

Jaish al-Islam commanders have reportedly called on Alloush to return the stolen sum but all to no avail.

Alloush was one of the founders of Jaish al-Islam bad boy group, and until recently led its political office.

He resigned from his post on May 3, after the group sustained a series of humiliating defeats in battles against Syrian army forces and pro-government fighters from popular defense groups in Eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of Damascus.

Many leaders of Jaish al-Islam have been accused of corruption over the past few years.

Alloush’s older brother and the founder of Jaish al-Islam, Zahran, was accused by other gangs in the Eastern Ghouta of stealing more than $12 million back in 2015, months before he was killed in a counter-terrorism operation conducted by Syrian government forces in the enclave.

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. The Syrian government says the Israeli regime and its Western and regional allies are aiding Takfiri terrorist groups that are wreaking havoc in the country.

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Syrian military officially establishes full control over strategic Qalamoun Mountains

2018-04-26

[AlMasdar] For the first time in seven years, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) is in full control of the Qalamoun Mountains.

With the last rebel forces leaving the eastern slopes of the Qalamoun Mountains, the Syrian military was able to secure the this entire rugged region near the Syrian capital.

The eastern Qalamoun region had long been under the control of the Free Syrian Army
... the more palatable version of the Syrian insurgency, heavily influenced by the Moslem Brüderbund...
(FSA) and Jaish al-Islam

An Nahar adds:

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a final convoy of 60 buses had arrived in the northern province of Aleppo.

The buses carrying hundreds of fighters and civilians made it to the northeast of the province, which is controlled by pro-~~The Sick Man of Europe~~ Turkey
...the decaying remnant of the Ottoman Empire....
rebels, the Britannia-based monitor said.

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

OPCW confirms visit to site of alleged chemical attack in Syria, Russians find chemical in rebel lab

2018-04-22

[ALMASDARNEWS] The OPCW confirmed that a team visited the site in Douma where an alleged chemical attack took place. The Russian Foreign Ministry has voiced concerns about the watchdog’s plans to visit fewer sites and speak to fewer witnesses.

On Saturday the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed on Twitter that its fact-finding mission team "visited one of the sites" in Douma "to collect samples for analysis in connection with allegations of chemical weapons use on 7 April 2018."

The collected samples will be sent to OPCW’s laboratory in Rijswijk, Netherlands and then "dispatched for analysis to the OPCW’s designated labs," the mission said in a statement.

The watchdog said it would "evaluate the situation and consider future steps including another possible visit to Douma."

The OPCW team departed for the city in Eastern Ghouta 11 days after Damascus sent a formal request to the watchdog to inspect the area, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

"Such delays in such a resonating case, regardless of the motives, are unacceptable, since not only the Syrian side but the Russian military [stationed in Syria] guaranteed the security of the OPCW team," she stated.

Moscow expects the OPCW to investigate the alleged chemical incident impartially. However,
corruption finds a dozen alibis for its evil deeds...
the mission’s plans to visit fewer sites linked to the purported attack and interview fewer witnesses raises "serious concerns," Zakharova said. According to the spokeswoman, these plans only "demonstrate the unwillingness to shed light on yet another staged provocation with the use of chemicals, which served as a reason for the missile strike" by the US, UK, and La Belle France.

Chemical substance of hexamine found in Douma laboratory -- Russian MoD

[ALMASDARNEWS] Russian broadcaster VGTRK released video on Friday showing an alleged chemical laboratory in Douma, suspected of belonging to Death Eater group Jaish al-Islam

...Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) was established by Zahran Alloush, the son of Saudi-based religious scholar Abdullah Mohammed Alloush, after Syrian authorities released him from prison in mid-2011 where he had been serving time for his Salafist activism. The group claimed responsibility for carrying out the July 2012 Damascus bombing that killed Defense Minister Dawoud Rajiha, Deputy Defense Minister Asef Shawkat, and Assistant Vice President Hassan Turkmani. It was a driving force behind actions in the Damascus region. It cooperated and conducted joint operations with al-Nusra. In Sptember 2013 Saudi Arabia engineered Liwa al-Islam's merger with fifty other more or less Salafist groups as a counterweight to al-Nusra, which the Learned Elders of Islam considered was growing too powereful...
According to Russian Defence Ministry’s military expert on radiation, chemical, and biological protection, Alexander Rodionov, "the specialists from radiation, chemical and biological protection’s corpses conducted extra examination in the chemical laboratory discovered in Douma."

He went on to say that "they discovered a lot of the chemical substance of hexamine that can be used for production of explosives as well as for synthesis of the poisonous substance sarin."

Several Western powers, led by the United States, claimed chemical substances were used by Syrian government forces on April 7. The claim has been denied by Damascus and Moscow, who called the allegations a "fabrication."

On April 14 the US, UK and La Belle France launched ~~Arclight~~ airstrike

s against multiple government targets in Damascus as a response to the alleged chemical attack against Syrian civilians.

Link

Syria-Lebanon-Iran

Syrian Army unearths mass grave containing tens of fallen soldiers, civilians in Douma, east Damascus

2018-04-18

[ALMASDARNEWS] the Syrian Army discovered a mass grave on the outskirts of the city of Douma in Damascus’ East Ghouta region which contains the bodies of tens of fallen troops and civilians.

According to preliminary reports, the remains of around thirty (30) government soldiers and non-combatants have been unearthed so far, more corpses may yet be found has the excavation continues.

Specifically, the makeshift burial site was found just south of Douma city’s al-Jalaa gardens area. Jaish al-Islam

Link

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