Erdogan’s discreet gangs: Fate of 600 kidnapped people in Syria

Robier al-Fares

With the continuous pressures of international human rights organizations and the cries of civil society against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s crimes in Syria, the Turkish occupation government has released a number of kidnappers over a period of more than two years. However, they, accompanied by armed militia members affiliated with the Syrian Interim Government and the Syrian National Coalition, kidnapped more of those who were released, and according to statistics, during the past two months, more than 200 citizens were kidnapped in exchange for the release of about 20 people, while the fate of more than 600 people is still unknown until now.

Of these citizens, Muhammad Yasar Maamou, 65, from the village of Shekhorza and Wastani, who is married with five children, four of them with special needs, and his wife were kidnapped on October 20, 2018 from the door of his house on the edge of the village while returning from an olive field accompanied by one of his handicapped sons. Since that date, his fate is still unknown until now.

Three villages of Shekhorza are under the control of the Northern Falcons.

With the continuation of the kidnapping situation, Erdogan’s soldiers committed a new number of crimes, as the Turkish occupation forces bombed several artillery shells in the town of Tal Rifaat and the surrounding villages, causing some material damage to buildings and shops, as well as bombing some of the sites of the auxiliary forces loyal to the Syrian regime in the vicinity of Meng Military Airport.

A child of Ghouta settlers also arrived at the Military Hospital in Afrin city, succumbing to wounds sustained by a stray bullet during armed clashes between two groups of Hamza Division members in the Mahmoudiya neighborhood, one of which is affiliated with a member of the Syrian People’s Assembly, Ahmed Al-Darwish, regarding financial wages related to smuggling people from the regime’s areas to Turkey, passing through Afrin, and trying to seize two motorcycles in exchange for the amount. A number of Hamza Division elements are still keeping the security cards issued by the Military Security Branch in Aleppo Governorate, and the militia members of the Sultan Suleyman Shah Division, led by Mohammed al-Jasim, nicknamed Abu Amsha, stole the home furniture belonging to Ibrahim Murad with a truck in front of Turkish soldiers and militia leaders while the family went to the olive fields to collect the remaining olives.

Jasim and his members were not satisfied with theft, plunder, and the imposition of royalties and ransoms on the right of the indigenous Kurdish population, but he his own members, one of them called Mamdouh, who was arrested with a number of other militia members, and they raided his home and searched for him under the pretext of contacting the hostile authorities and assaulting his wife Souad and dragging her in the street, in addition to severely beating Farid bin Ziyad’s wife, who was subsequently transferred to a hospital in Afrin to receive treatment.