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Activists Condemn SDF’s Arrest of 16 Journalists in Syria's Raqqa

Members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) (Asharq Al-Awsat)
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Activists Condemn SDF’s Arrest of 16 Journalists in Syria's Raqqa

Members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) (Asharq Al-Awsat)

The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) said on Sunday that the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) detained at least 16 journalists in Raqqa on July 30.

This came as activists revealed that the Kurdish-led SDF forces have arrested media figures as part of a security campaign in Syria’s northeastern province.

They said the SDF arrested several journalists working in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and in independent media outlets in Raqqa.

The SNHR report said the 16 arrested journalists were held by the SDF’s intelligence apparatus on Saturday under the pretext of “espionage.”

Meanwhile, activists indicated on their Twitter accounts that a large-scale arrest campaign was launched in Raqqa, targeting media professionals including Ruba Al-Ali, an employee at Hawar Agency, Ammar Al-Khalaf from the Euphrates Heritage Agency and formerly at Hawar, Ammar Haidar, who works at North Press and previously at Hawar, Khaled Al-Hassan in the education committee of the Raqqa Civil Council, and Batoul Al-Hassan in the youth media committee and the “Better Tomorrow” organization, in addition to Abdul Karim Al-Raheel, an employee of the Raqqa Civil Council.

According to the Syrian Press Center, the activists said all the detained journalists were from institutions located in the self-styled Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, adding that a number of activists in Raqqa are currently hiding over fears of arrest.

SNHR said the SDF follows a policy similar to the Syrian regime forces during arrest operations, which are not based on any prior judicial warrants.

It said the SDF kidnap the journalists from roads, markets, and public places, or they raid the headquarters of the media agencies and civil groups.

The network expressed fear that the arrested journalists will be subjected to torture during the investigation, and they will be among the forcibly disappeared, similar to the fate of 85 percent of detainees and the disappeared.

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Iraq Starts Excavation of Large Mass Grave Left by ISIS

Iraqi soldiers salute as they stand next to a mass grave for soldiers from Camp Speicher who have been killed by ISIS militants. REUTERS/Stringer
Iraqi soldiers salute as they stand next to a mass grave for soldiers from Camp Speicher who have been killed by ISIS militants. REUTERS/Stringer
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Iraq Starts Excavation of Large Mass Grave Left by ISIS

Iraqi soldiers salute as they stand next to a mass grave for soldiers from Camp Speicher who have been killed by ISIS militants. REUTERS/Stringer
Iraqi soldiers salute as they stand next to a mass grave for soldiers from Camp Speicher who have been killed by ISIS militants. REUTERS/Stringer

Iraqi officials have begun the excavation of what is believed to be a mass grave left behind by the ISIS extremist group during its rampage across the country a decade ago.

Local authorities are working with the judiciary, forensic investigations, Iraq’s Martyrs’ Foundation, and the directorate of mass graves to carry out the excavation of the site of a sink hole in al-Khafsa, south of the northern city of Mosul, the state-run Iraqi News Agency reported Sunday.

Ahmad Qusay al-Asady, head of the Martyrs Foundation’s mass graves excavation department, told The Associated Press that his team began work at Khasfa on Aug. 9 at the request of Nineveh province’s Gov. Abdulqadir al-Dakhil.

The operation is initially limited to gathering visible human remains and surface evidence while preparing for a full exhumation that officials say will require international support.

After an initial 15 days of work, the foundation’s Mosul teams will build a database and start collecting DNA samples from families of suspected victims.

Al-Asady explained that laboratory processing and a DNA database must come first to ensure proper identification. Full exhumations can only proceed once specialized assistance is secured to navigate the site’s hazards, including sulfur water and unexploded ordnance.

Khasfa is “a very complicated site,” he said.

Based on unverified accounts from witnesses and families and other unofficial testimonies, authorities estimate that thousands of bodies could be buried there, he said.

Scores of mass graves containing thousands of bodies of people believed to have been killed by the extremist group have been found in Iraq and Syria.

At its peak, ISIS ruled an area half the size of the United Kingdom in Iraq and Syria and was notorious for its brutality. It beheaded civilians and enslaved and raped thousands of women from the Yazidi community, one of Iraq’s oldest religious minorities.

The group was defeated in Iraq in July 2017, when Iraqi forces captured the northern city of Mosul. Three months later, it suffered a major blow when Kurdish forces captured the Syrian northern city of Raqqa, which was the group’s de-facto capital. The war against ISIS officially ended in March 2019, when US-backed and Kurdish-led fighters of the Syrian Democratic Forces captured the eastern Syrian town of Baghouz, which was the last sliver of land the extremists controlled.

Rabah Nouri Attiyah, a lawyer who has worked on more than 70 cases of missing people in Nineveh, told the AP that information he obtained from the foundation and different Iraqi courts during his investigations points to Khasfa as “the largest mass grave in modern Iraqi history."

Al-Asady, however, said investigators “cannot confirm yet if it is the largest mass grave” to be found in Iraq, “but according to the size of the space, we estimate it to be one of the largest.”

Attiyah said roughly 70% of the human remains at Khasfa are believed to belong to Iraqi army and police personnel, with other victims including Yazidis.

He said he has interviewed numerous eyewitnesses from the area who saw ISIS fighters bring people there by bus and kill them. “Many of them were decapitated,” he said.

Attiyah’s own uncle and cousin were police officers killed by ISIS, and he is among those hoping to identify and recover the remains of loved ones.

Testimonies and witness statements, as well as findings from other mass graves in Nineveh, indicate that most of the military, police and other security forces personnel killed by ISIS are expected to be found at Khasfa, along with Yazidis from Sinjar and Shiite victims from Tal Afar, he said.