A former commander of the Turkish-backed Ahrar al-Sham Islamist group has been sentenced to six years in prison in the Netherlands for war crimes and membership in a terrorist organization.
The Dutch Public Prosecution earlier demanded a 10-year sentence, but a court on Wednesday ruled that the man, whose full name was not released, be sentenced to six years in prison.
The court said there was evidence that the 31-year-old man, identified by Dutch media as Al Y or Ahmad Al Y, was part of the Syrian group Ahrar al-Sham from March 1, 2015 until November 10, 2015, and involved in terrorism.
(It is common for Dutch media to refer to a suspect by their initials, although Dutch law does not prohibit publication of a defendant’s full name.)
Al Y was arrested in the Netherlands in 2019 after he presented himself at a Dutch asylum seekers’ center in the city of Ter Apel. He was flagged as a suspect in war crimes by German judicial authorities and as a result arrested, the Dutch Public Prosecution said in March.
The man was suspected of war crimes after posing with the body of an enemy fighter and kicking another corpse during fighting in the Syrian city of Hama in 2015 in a video published on Youtube. In the 2015 video he curses the dead men as “dogs.”
According to Dutch prosecutors the suspect can also be seen in a YouTube video singing to celebrate the deaths of the fighters and “referring to them as dogs”.
Under Dutch law his alleged actions are violations of the personal dignity of war victims. Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions they can be prosecuted in the Netherlands even if they occur in other countries under universal jurisdiction laws. If convicted the suspect could face a life sentence.
Violations of the Geneva Conventions could also lead to life sentences.
Ahrar al-Sham was designated twice as a terrorist organization by the court in the Dutch city of Rotterdam. According to the Wilson Centre, Ahrar al Sham (“the Free Men of Syria”) is a salafist group formed in January 2012. Its founders were prisoners the Syrian regime released from the notorious Saydnaya military prison in the second half of 2011.
One of the group’s leaders, Abu Khaled al Suri, was al-Qaeda’s representative in Syria before he was killed in 2014.
The Netherlands is not the only country that has prosecuted or investigated asylum seekers for war crimes from both anti and pro-Syrian regime groups. In February, a German court sentenced a former Syrian intelligence officer to four-and-a-half years for war crimes.
Last year a senior member of Jaysh al-Islam was arrested in France, accused of war crimes.
(Reuters, Kurdistan 24)
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