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Rebel group in Syria is holding nuns, Arab newspaper reports
By Patrick J. McDonnell and Nabih Bulos | December 6, 2013, 2:50 p.m.
BEIRUT — Syrian rebels are demanding the release of 1,000 female government detainees in exchange for the freedom of a group of Greek Orthodox nuns being held by opposition forces, according to an account published Friday in a pan-Arab newspaper.
The proposed swap indicates that the nuns are now hostages -- contradicting earlier opposition assertions that the sisters were evacuated for their own safety during heavy fighting early this week in Maaloula, a Christian landmark town outside Damascus.
Hostage-taking and kidnapping, often with sectarian overtones, have become defining characteristics of Syria’s more than 2-year-old civil conflict. The fate of two kidnapped Christian bishops, believed seized by opposition forces in April, remains publicly unknown.
[Updated at 2:50 p.m. PST Dec. 6: In a video broadcast Friday on the Al Jazeera satellite network, several of the nuns took turns speaking and appeared in good health, though it was not possible to verify the authenticity of the footage. The nuns said they had been taken for their personal safety, the Associated Press reported. Security analysts generally consider such videos to be suspect because captives may be speaking under duress.
“We are 13 nuns and three civilians and we are here in a very, very nice villa,” one of the nuns says in the video. “And we will leave in two days.”]
A spokesman for a rebel group identified as the Ahrar al-Qalamoun Brigade told the Asharq al-Awsat newspaper that the nuns would not be released until the fulfillment of several demands, most importantly the liberation of 1,000 female prisoners being held in Syrian government detention, according to the paper’s website.
“The nuns are in a safe place,” said the rebel spokesman, identified as Mohannad Abu al-Fidaa, though he declined to provide additional details.
The spokesman described the conditions for the nuns’ release as “joint demands” from his faction and another rebel group, the Nusrah Front, which is affiliated with Al Qaeda. The captors also were demanding a suspension of government sieges on a number of rebel strongholds, including several suburbs of Damascus, the capital.
Published reports have indicated that rebels seized a dozen nuns during fighting between rebel and government forces in Maaloula, a historic and mostly Christian town north of Damascus that has been the site of intense combat.
The nuns were among a community of 40 sisters said to be residing at the Greek Orthodox monastery of St. Thecla, named after an early Christian saint who was a disciple of Paul the Apostle.
Government authorities accused “terrorists” of kidnapping the nuns from the monastery at gunpoint and holding them hostage. Opposition spokesmen said the nuns were moved for safety reasons amid heavy government shelling.
The exact number of nuns taken from the monastery and whether any remained at the convent in Maaloula remained uncertain. Also unclear is the fate of as many as 21 orphans said to have been in the nuns’ care at the monastery. [Updated at 2:50 p.m. PST Dec. 6: The fate of several workers from the site also is unclear.]
The case has caused deep consternation among Christian communities in the Middle East and worldwide, with Christian and Muslim religious leaders pleading for the nuns’ release. On Wednesday, Pope Francis called for prayers on behalf of the Syrian nuns “taken by force by armed men.”
The seizure of the nuns has heightened fears among Syria’s Christian minority that they are being targeted by Islamist rebels seeking to overthrow the government of President Bashar Assad. Christians and other Syrian minorities are generally viewed as supportive of the government.
On Friday, Lebanese caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati contacted Syria's Greek Orthodox patriarch, John X. Yazigi, and said the abductions of the nuns “do not reflect in any way the teachings of the Islamic religion, nor do they mirror the human and spiritual values of Muslims," the Lebanese national news service reported.
2012 Countdown » Thu Aug 02, 2012 10:44 am wrote:US Proxy Al Qaeda Death Squads in Syria
Thursday, July 26, 2012
US Proxy Al Qaeda Death Squads in Syria
by Stephen Lendman
On July 11, German writer Jurgen Todenhofer confirmed the presence of Al Qaeda insurgents in Syria. He met with them, he said. He holds them and others like them responsible for mass terror attacks.
He described a "massacre marketing strategy." He called it "among the most disgusting things that I have ever experienced in an armed conflict."
He added that Western media distort what's happening on the ground. Viewers and readers know it's their stock and trade. They're paid to lie. Journalists dedicated to truth and full disclosure need not apply.
IanEye wrote:4.) ISIS ISN’T JUST AIMING AT CONQUERING THE MIDDLE EAST AND, EVENTUALLY, THE REST OF THE WORLD. RATHER, THEY WANT THE LARGEST “RELIGOUS CLEANSING” IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND. With the exception of the so-called “religions of the book” – that is, ISIS’ version of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity – ISIS wants to kill non-believers and apostates and enslave their women and children. This means that all of the Shiites, Yazidis, Hindus, Atheists and Polytheists are supposed to die, and that hundreds of millions of people would be eliminated in the course of this “ethnic cleansing”.
The Islamic State is failing at being a state
GAZIANTEP, Turkey — The Islamic State’s vaunted exercise in state-building appears to be crumbling as living conditions deteriorate across the territories under its control, exposing the shortcomings of a group that devotes most of its energies to fighting battles and enforcing strict rules.
Services are collapsing, prices are soaring and medicines are scarce in towns and cities across the “caliphate” proclaimed in Iraq and Syria by the Islamic State, residents say, belying the group’s boasts that it is delivering a model form of governance for Muslims.
Slick Islamic State videos depicting functioning governing offices and the distribution of aid fail to match the reality of growing deprivation and disorganized, erratic leadership, the residents say. A trumpeted Islamic State currency has not materialized, nor have the passports the group promised. Schools barely function, doctors are few and disease is on the rise.
In the Iraqi city of Mosul, the water has become undrinkable because supplies of chlorine have dried up, said a journalist living there, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his safety. Hepatitis is spreading and flour is becoming increasingly scarce, he said. “Life in the city is nearly dead, and it is as though we are living in a giant prison,” he said.
In the Syrian city of Raqqa, the group’s self-styled capital, water and electricity are available for no more than three or four hours a day, garbage piles up uncollected and the city’s poor scavenge for scraps on streets crowded with sellers hawking anything they can find to sell, residents say.
...
The government workers who help sustain what is left of the crumbling infrastructure, in Syrian as well as Iraqi cities, continue to be paid by the Syrian government, traveling each month to collect their pay from offices in government-controlled areas.
“ISIS doesn’t know how to do this stuff,” said the U.S. official, using an acronym for the group. “When stuff breaks down they get desperate. It doesn’t have a whole lot of engineers and staff to run the cities, so things are breaking down.”
Wombaticus Rex wrote:“ISIS doesn’t know how to do this stuff,” said the U.S. official, using an acronym for the group. “When stuff breaks down they get desperate. It doesn’t have a whole lot of engineers and staff to run the cities, so things are breaking down.”
Deutschland beteiligt sich an Propaganda
Die Linksfraktion kritisiert die Informationspolitik der Bundesregierung zur Gewalt in Syrien.
Anlass war eine parlamentarische Anfrage an das Auswärtige Amt über das Massaker im syrischen Hula. Zudem mische Berlin in Syrien "geheimdienstlich“ mit.
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