ANKARA/BAGHDAD: Turkey has increased diplomatic efforts to release citizens held in Iraq after 16 Turkish women linked to Daesh were sentenced to death.
Iraq is holding a series of trials of foreign fighters linked to Daesh, including women who joined the group after it launched a devastating takeover of the north of the country in 2014. About 300 Turkish women affiliated with Daesh are held in Iraqi prisons, AFP reported.
Ankara says that the detentions have no legal basis. Officials have requested the return of children and adults who have not committed any crimes, the Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah reported on Tuesday. Ankara is in contact with Iraqi authorities for their safe release, the officials said, adding that four children have returned to Turkey.
Reports say that the women, of various nationalities, currently on trial in Iraq are wives or widows of Daesh members or implicated in attacks by the group by providing its members with logistics assistance.
In court in Baghdad on Sunday, the women were sentenced to death by hanging. Four of the women were accompanied by young children. A judicial official told AFP they had all confessed to the charges and admitted entering Iraq illegally to join their Daesh militant husbands.
A source at the Iraqi Supreme Judiciary Council told Arab News that the women have the right to appeal before the federal court.
“These women have confessed that they committed terrorist crimes on Iraqi soil and were tried according to Iraqi laws,” the source said. “No Iraqi or non-Iraqi authority has the right to interfere in the work of the judiciary.”
Jamal Assadi, a senior government legal adviser, told Arab News that every state has full freedom to try any foreigner who commits an offense on its territory. “Iraq is no exception to this principle,” he said.
He said many Iraqis were tried and sentenced in Turkey and Iraq “had not expressed any objection.”
The number of Daesh fighters’ relatives held in Iraq has flooded the country’s legal system. More than 1,300 women and children surrendered to the Iraqi authorities in August alone after Daesh was forced into retreat.
The speed of the trials and death sentences in a country still raw from the suffering brought by the extremists has raised concerns from human rights groups. Iraq has one of the highest execution rates in the world.
Last month, a German woman of Moroccan origin was also sentenced to death for being a member of Daesh.
Human Rights Watch denounced the rulings as “unfair.”
However, Iraq also extradited to Russia four women and 27 children allegedly linked to the group, claiming that they were “trapped” into joining it.
The sentencing of Turks risks upsetting a delicate, but improving, relationship between Ankara and Baghdad.
Last month, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim and his Iraqi counterpart Haider Al-Abadi agreed to increase their cooperation against Daesh.
On Feb. 17, Turkish authorities extradited a top Daesh leader to Iraq after he had fled to Turkey’s northwestern province of Sakarya. Authorities said his capture was the result of intense cooperation between Baghdad, Washington and Ankara.
Turkey recently pledged $5 billion (SR18.75 billion) to help reconstruction efforts in Iraq after the devastation of Daesh.
“In light of the recent positive developments between Iraq and Turkey, it is unlikely that this case would develop into a diplomatic crisis,” Dr. Muhanad Seloom, associate lecturer in international relations at the University of Exeter, told Arab News.
“Cross-border criminal cases are inherently complex because of states’ sovereign powers, types of legal systems, and different governance systems,” he added.
In order to secure the release and extradition of its citizens, Seloom said the Turkish government should provide legal representation to its citizens incarcerated in Iraq and initiate talks with the Iraqi government.
Daesh widows pile pressure on Iraqi justice system
Daesh widows pile pressure on Iraqi justice system
Israeli strikes hit Yemen’s Sanaa and Hodeidah, Houthis’ Al Masirah TV says
- Houthis said that multiple air raids targeted an airport, military air base and a power station in Yemen
JERUSALEM: Multiple air raids hit several targets in Houthi-held areas of Yemen on Thursday, witnesses and the militia said, with their media saying Israel launched the strikes.
Sanaa airport and the adjacent Al-Dailami base were targeted along with a power station in Hodeida, in attacks that the Houthis’ Al-Masirah TV channel called “Israeli aggression.”
There was no immediate comment from Israel on the strikes, which come a day after Yemen fired a ballistic missile and two drones at Israel.
On Saturday, a Houthi missile attack left 16 people wounded in Tel Aviv.
Saturday’s incident had prompted a warning from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said he had ordered the destruction of Houthi infrastructure.
“I have instructed our forces to destroy the infrastructure of Houthis because anyone who tries to harm us will be struck with full force,” Netanyahu said in parliament.
“We will continue to crush the forces of evil with strength and ingenuity, even if it takes time.”
Syria authorities say torched 1 million captagon pills
DAMASCUS: Syria’s new authorities torched a large stockpile of drugs on Wednesday, two security officials told AFP, including one million pills of captagon, whose industrial-scale production flourished under ousted president Bashar Assad.
Captagon is a banned amphetamine-like stimulant that became Syria’s largest export during the country’s more than 13-year civil war, effectively turning it into a narco state under Assad.
“We found a large quantity of captagon, around one million pills,” said a balaclava-wearing member of the security forces, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Osama, and whose khaki uniform bore a “public security” patch.
An AFP journalist saw forces pour fuel over and set fire to a cache of cannabis, the painkiller tramadol, and around 50 bags of pink and yellow captagon pills in a security compound formerly belonging to Assad’s forces in the capital’s Kafr Sousa district.
Captagon has flooded the black market across the region in recent years, with oil-rich Saudi Arabia a major destination.
“The security forces of the new government discovered a drug warehouse as they were inspecting the security quarter,” said another member of the security forces, who identified himself as Hamza.
Authorities destroyed the stocks of alcohol, cannabis, captagon and hashish in order to “protect Syrian society” and “cut off smuggling routes used by Assad family businesses,” he added.
Syria’s new Islamist rulers have yet to spell out their policy on alcohol, which has long been widely available in the country.
Since an Islamist-led rebel alliance toppled Assad on December 8 after a lightning offensive, Syria’s new authorities have said massive quantities of captagon have been found in former government sites around the country, including security branches.
AFP journalists in Syria have seen fighters from Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) set fire to what they said were stashes of captagon found at facilities once operated by Assad’s forces.
Security force member Hamza confirmed Wednesday that “this is not the first initiative of its kind — the security services, in a number of locations, have found other warehouses... and drug manufacturing sites and destroyed them in the appropriate manner.”
Maher Assad, a military commander and the brother of Bashar Assad, is widely accused of being the power behind the lucrative captagon trade.
Experts believe Syria’s former leader used the threat of drug-fueled unrest to put pressure on Arab governments.
A Saudi delegation met Syria’s new leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa in Damascus on Sunday, a source close to the government told AFP, to discuss the “Syria situation and captagon.”
Jordan in recent years has also cracked down on the smuggling of weapons and drugs including captagon along its 375-kilometer (230-mile) border with Syria.
Jordan says 18,000 Syrians returned home since Assad’s fall
AMMAN: About 18,000 Syrians have crossed into their country from Jordan since the government of Bashar Assad was toppled earlier this month, Jordanian authorities said on Thursday.
Interior Minister Mazen Al-Faraya told state TV channel Al-Mamlaka that “around 18,000 Syrians have returned to their country between the fall of the regime of Bashar Assad on December 8, 2024 until Thursday.”
He said the returnees included 2,300 refugees registered with the United Nations.
Amman says it has hosted about 1.3 million Syrians who fled their country since civil war broke out in 2011, with 650,000 formally registered with the United Nations.
Lebanon hopes for neighborly relations in first message to new Syria government
- Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah played a major part propping up Syria’s ousted President Bashar Assad through years of war
- Syria’s new Islamist de-facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa is seeking to establish relations with Arab and Western leaders
DUBAI: Lebanon said on Thursday it was looking forward to having the best neighborly relations with Syria, in its first official message to the new administration in Damascus.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib passed the message to his Syrian counterpart, Asaad Hassan Al-Shibani, in a phone call, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry said on X.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah played a major part propping up Syria’s ousted President Bashar Assad through years of war, before bringing its fighters back to Lebanon over the last year to fight in a bruising war with Israel – a redeployment which weakened Syrian government lines.
Under Assad, Hezbollah used Syria to bring in weapons and other military equipment from Iran, through Iraq and Syria and into Lebanon. But on Dec. 6, anti-Assad fighters seized the border with Iraq and cut off that route, and two days later, Islamist militants captured the capital Damascus.
Syria’s new Islamist de-facto leader Ahmed Al-Sharaa is seeking to establish relations with Arab and Western leaders after toppling Assad.
Iraqi intelligence chief discusses border security with new Syrian administration
BAGHDAD: An Iraqi delegation met with Syria’s new rulers in Damascus on Thursday, an Iraqi government spokesman said, the latest diplomatic outreach more than two weeks after the fall of Bashar Assad’s rule.
The delegation, led by Iraqi intelligence chief Hamid Al-Shatri, “met with the new Syrian administration,” government spokesman Bassem Al-Awadi told state media, adding that the parties discussed “the developments in the Syrian arena, and security and stability needs on the two countries’ shared border.”
