Araz Jalal, a representative from the Egypt-based International Organization for Development and Human Rights, told Rudaw’s Nasir Ali this week that al-Nusra Front (Jabhat al-Nusra), which has been rebranded as the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is still “holding 800 Yazidi women and girls who had been held hostage by the Islamic State (ISIS)” when the group attacked their hometown of Shingal in 2014.
Syria’s civil war dramatically reignited late last month when a coalition of rebels led by the jihadist HTS launched a blistering offensive against the Syrian army, seizing the northern cities of Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and ultimately capturing the capital Damascus as Assad fled the country, ending over five decades of Baathist rule.
Celebrations across Syria, sparked by the fall of the regime, were abruptly halted as stories about the inmates of the Sednaya prison in the Damascus suburbs began to emerge.
Hundreds of prisoners who were freed from the notorious prison, following the fall of the regime, have been admitted to hospitals across Syria to receive treatment following years of abuse. Families have flooded the hospitals looking for their long-lost loved ones.
Rudaw’s cameras inside the prison on Wednesday captured workers digging through walls and the ground, following social media rumors suggesting that more inmates might be in hidden sections of the prison.
Jalal also said that after the fall of ISIS in Iraq, nearly 60 Peshmerga fighters were held hostage by the militants who were taken to Syria but have not been found yet. He believes that they were kept alive because they needed them for hostage exchange deals.
He added that after ISIS lost most of its territory in Syria, the Peshmerga hostages must have been transferred to the HTS or Syrian regime prisons.
“According to our information, about 60,000 prisoners have been released from Syrian prisons, but hundreds more have not yet been released,” Jalal said.
