Baladi News – (Omar al-Hassan)
Pro- Assad Facebook pages revealed the truth about what was thought a 12 years old child who had been captured and then beheaded by Nur al-Din al-Zanki rebel group in Aleppo as shown in a video clip. Abdullah Issa, the proclaimed child, was indeed a 19 years volunteer fighting for the military intelligence according to his relatives.
Abdullah’s cousin, as she called herself, indicated that he was actually Syrian from Homs, and not Palestinian as was mentioned at the time of his capture. She also clarified that due to having thalassemia, he had growth problems that made him appear younger than he really was.
The cousin also refused distorting the image of the killed person, clarifying that her “relative was taken to Aleppo to participate in a military operation, and he was not a civilian as claimed by the Syrian regime media.”
To demonstrate what she said, she added a number of pictures showing the “child” militant wearing khaki and holding a machine gun that requires an adult to hold. In the lower part of the picture, it was written “the fighting martyr”, and in the uppermost corner, a picture of Hafez al-Assad, the previous president, was added.
Mohamed Sayes, another Facebook subscriber, emphasized that Abdullah’s family was told by an anonymous journalist not to mention the real age of their son in order to utilize the scenes of his brutal and barbaric execution to win some sympathy with Assad’s regime in the west.
The video clip, which went viral on the internet, caused very angry reactions among the Syrian revolution’s activists, considering that killing a “child” has nothing to do with the ethics of the rebels. The activists regarded such an act a crime that must not be tolerated, because slaughtering is associated to Assad’s militia and ISIS, rather than a faction fighting under the flag of the Syrian revolution that has sacrificed many lives to reach its goals.
In its turn, Nur al-Din al-Zanki movement, issued a statement in which it “condemned this human rights’ violation, as the movement is a rebellious one that believes in the ethics and goals of revolution.”
The statement considered that such an act “does not represent the general principles of the movement, but an individual error.” It added that “a legal committee will be established to investigate what was posted and reveal the truth according to rules, in preparation for sentencing as soon as possible.”
The execution, which was utilized to the maximum by the regime’s media, had a prominent impact on western media. It was used to promote a “barbarian” image of the rebels, which the regime is trying to establish among the western populations, especially that such an act is considered terrifying for the west. Other media used the clip to divert the attention from the regime’s massacres in Manbij and Aleppo against civilians and promote the idea that the regime is fighting terrorists.
In this context, Baladi News Media Network condemns the execution that violates the principles of the Syrian revolution in the first place, and the humanitarian laws and rules in the second place.