Category Archives: Syria

Human rights lawyers attempt to bring Syria war crimes cases to ICC

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Attempt to target Iranian and Syrian officials includes evidence from civilians forced to flee to Jordan

A groundbreaking attempt to make Iranian and Syrian military officials answerable for war crimes they may have committed in Syria is being launched, as part of an effort to have the cases brought before the international criminal court.

The request includes evidence of Syrian victims forced to flee into Jordan due to attacks and intimidation by the Syrian government and Iran-backed militia groups. It is being brought by the US-based Iran Human Rights Documentation Center in conjunction with Haydee Dijkstal, a UK barrister.

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‘Welcome to England. How are you doing?’: the artist who holds out a hand to refugees

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Marie Gracie helps families arriving from Afghanistan. The Guardian angel sends a party entertainer to help the children adjust to their first English winter

Marie Gracie never met the boy, but his fate changed her life. On 2 September 2015, three-year-old Alan Kurdi washed up, drowned, on a Turkish beach. His family were Syrian refugees, trying to reach Europe. Journalist Nilüfer Demir took a photo. Alan lies face down, in a T-shirt and shorts. His feet are so tiny. His hands are upturned, facing the sky.

“I’m a mother,” says Gracie, an artist from Milton Keynes. “Can you imagine anything worse than your child being in the news like that?” She reached out to her local chapter of Refugees Welcome, set up in the wake of the Syrian war.

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‘Mercenaries have skills armies lack’: former Wagner operative opens up

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Marat Gabidullin has written memoir about fighting for Wagner because Russians should know ‘mercenaries exist’

Sitting in a cafe in an upmarket Moscow suburb, the former mercenary Marat Gabidullin looked a long way from the battlefields of Syria where he fought half a decade ago.

Gripping his recently finished memoir, In the Same River Twice, the first published account of fighting for the secretive Russian mercenary outfit Wagner, Gabidullin said: “I wrote this because I realised it’s time for our country to face the truth: mercenaries exist.”

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British women and children detained in Syria failed by UK government, inquiry finds

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Parliamentary report finds ‘compelling evidence’ of trafficking and highlights missed opportunities to protect vulnerable people later stripped of citizenship

There is “compelling evidence” that British women and children currently detained in camps in north-east Syria were trafficked to the country against their will, according to a new parliamentary report.

After a six-month inquiry by the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on trafficked Britons in Syria, the report published on Thursday highlights how systemic failures by UK public bodies enabled Islamic State (IS) trafficking of vulnerable women and children as young as 12.

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Flying high: how a photo of a Syrian father and son led to a new life in Italy

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A tender moment captured by Mehmet Aslan of Munzir al-Nazzal and his son, both survivors of the Syrian war, prompted Italian organisations to act. A year on, they are settling into life in Tuscany

In January last year, while working on the Turkish-Syrian border, photojournalist Mehmet Aslan photographed a Syrian man, Munzir al-Nazzal, who had lost a leg in a bomb attack. Munzir was playing with Mustafa, his 5-year-old son, who was born without limbs, and the shot portrayed the father, propped up on a crutch, raising his smiling child into the air.

Aslan entitled his photograph Hardship of Life.

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Visual guide to deadly US raid targeting Islamic State leader in Syria

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US says Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi killed himself when he detonated explosives in home in Atme

Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi took over as leader of Islamic State in 2019 following the deaths in quick succession of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Baghdadi’s nominated successor Abu Hassan al-Muhajjir.

The US operation to try to kill him had been in the planning stages since early December, when officials became convinced that he was living in a nondescript three-storey building on the outskirts of Atme in Syria’s Idlib province, close to the Turkish border.

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Islamic State’s leader may be dead but the organisation still lurks in the rubble

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Analysis: Qurayshi’s killing by the US has to be set against January’s raid on a Syria prison, IS’s biggest attack for years

Being an Islamic State leader is not what it used to be. The death of the latest IS supremo, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, far from the heartland of the terror group’s rise in Iraq in a frugal home in the back blocks of Syria, is another painful blow to an organisation that only five years ago held significant territory in both countries and cast a shadow across an entire region.

Its slide ever since has been dramatic. Unable to hold land, its old guard wiped out, its finances shredded and rank and file depleted, IS looks – at face value – like a group that has had its day. And yet it still lurks amid the rubble of both countries, where it is slowly yet assuredly stirring.

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Joe Biden confirms death of Islamic State leader after US raid in Syria – video

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Biden commended the US military for its overnight raid in north-west Syria that resulted in the death of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the Islamic State leader and one of the world’s most wanted men. The US president said the operation sent a strong message to terrorists around the world: 'We will come after you and find you'

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Footage shows aftermath of US raid on house of Islamic State leader – video

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The leader of Islamic State has been killed during an overnight raid by US special forces in north-west Syria. Drone footage shows the aftermath of a pre-dawn attack on a property in the village of Atme, just south of the Turkish border, that led to up to 13 casualties. A senior US administration official said Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi detonated a bomb at the beginning of the operation that killed him and members of his family.

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Islamic State leader killed during raid by US special forces in Syria

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Joe Biden says military has removed Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi from the battlefield

Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the leader of Islamic State and one of the world’s most wanted men, has been killed during an overnight raid by US special forces in north-west Syria.

The pre-dawn attack on a house in the village of Atme, just south of the Turkish border, led to up to 13 casualties, among them women and children. It also resulted in the destruction of a US helicopter, which had been used to carry special forces troops from Erbil in Iraq.

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Former Irish soldier was prepared to die for Islamic State, court hears

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Lisa Smith ‘enveloped’ herself in the ‘black flag of IS’ in Syria, prosecutor says

A former Irish soldier accused of joining Islamic State was prepared to die a martyr, a court in Dublin has heard.

Lisa Smith, 39, from Dundalk, County Louth, has pleaded not guilty to being a member of the terrorist organisation between October 2015 and December 2019.

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Hundreds of boys ‘human shields’ in Islamic State prison breakout

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Siege in Kurdish-run prison in Syria ‘deeply distressing’, says Save the Children

The fate of more than 700 boys and teenage detainees has become central to the siege of a Kurdish-run prison in Syria that was overrun on Friday by jihadists, who are accused of using the boys as human shields.

As the siege around the Ghwayran prison in the Kurdish-run northern city of Hasakah entered a fifth day, Islamic State prisoners inside moved into a dormitory housing the boys, some of whom are as young as 12, in an attempt to prevent an assault by Kurdish forces stationed outside.

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Kill the Bill and period protests: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Cambodia to Costa Rica

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Islamic State attacks prison in Syria and military base in Iraq

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‘Dozens of IS fighters’ were freed from the jail and the attacks raise fears of the terror group’s resurgence

Islamic State has attacked a Syrian prison housing its suspected members and a military base in Iraq in near-simultaneous deadly operations that have revived fears of the terror group’s resurgence.

IS has yet to comment on the attacks and there is no indication that these were coordinated, but according to analysts they strongly suggest IS is trying to boost its ranks and arsenal in an attempt to reorganise across both countries.

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Syrian survivors cling to hope Raslan case will mark end of regime’s impunity

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Analysis: sentencing of former colonel to life by German court may not be last chink in Assad’s armour

It was a moment thought nearly impossible after a decade of impunity: a senior Syrian intelligence officer jailed for life for helping direct the horrors of one of modern history’s most brutal wars.

But as Anwar Raslan, a former colonel in Bashar al-Assad’s forces, bowed to his fate, survivors of the barbarous regime of torture that he helped run finally had something to cling to.

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Jailing of Syrian intelligence officer ‘step towards justice’ say former detainees

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Anwar Raslan’s conviction in Germany sends signal that Assad regime systematically uses torture, say detention system survivors

For survivors of Syria’s brutal detention system, the landmark conviction of a former Syrian intelligence official for crimes against humanity represents a vital step towards justice.

“We initially hoped for a trial at the international criminal court, but nevertheless this is an important step,” said Hussein Ghrer, one of 24 former detainees of Branch 251, a military intelligence unit with its own prison in Damascus, who testified against Anwar Raslan.

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German court jails former Syrian intelligence officer for life

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Anwar Raslan found to have overseen murder of at least 27 people and torture of at least 4,000 at Damascus prison

A German court has sentenced a Syrian former intelligence officer to life in prison in a case the UN rights chief said could lead to accountability for other perpetrators of the war’s “unspeakable crimes”.

Anwar Raslan, a former colonel loyal to the regime who later defected and gained asylum in Germany, was deemed by the judge at Koblenz higher regional court to have verifiably overseen the murder of at least 27 and torture of at least 4,000 prisoners at a detention facility in Damascus.

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German court expected to accuse Assad regime in Syria of torture

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Ex-Syrian intelligence official Anwar Raslan is charged with crimes against humanity, rape and murder

A German court is expected to issue a verdict against a former Syrian intelligence official accused of overseeing the murder of 58 people and the torture of thousands of others, in a landmark case expected to declare the actions of the Assad regime over the last decade a crime against humanity for the first time.

The verdict against Anwar Raslan, a former colonel loyal to the regime who later defected and fled Syria, is both a highly symbolic moment for the Syrian opposition in exile and a potential risk for those seeking to bring more war criminals to justice in the future, some of whom say a harsh sentence could discourage other defectors from talking openly to authorities.

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UK accused of ‘targeted killing’ after drone strike on arms dealer to IS

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Rights charity Reprieve seeks answers from MoD over death of Abu Hamza al-Shuhail in Syria in October

Britain has been accused of reviving a policy of “targeted killing” after it emerged that the RAF had killed an arms dealer linked to Islamic State in a precision drone strike in Syria at the end of October.

Reprieve, a human rights charity, asked “what are the criteria” used to justify who can be targeted in a “track and kill” drone strike, and called on ministers to tell the Commons why this strike was deemed necessary.

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Flames over Syrian port after reported Israeli airstrike – video

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An Israeli airstrike hit Syria’s Latakia port before dawn on Tuesday, the second such attack on the cargo hub this month, Syrian state media reported. Since the outbreak of Syria’s civil war in 2011, Israel has routinely carried out airstrikes on its neighbour, mostly targeting Syrian government troops. The Israeli military has in the past defended the strikes as a necessary measure to prevent its enemy Iran from gaining a foothold on its doorstep

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