Syrian human rights activist Ribal al-Assad has torn into Europe to lift sanctions on the country’s new “terrorist” regime, warning him that he would be better than his first cousin, exiled leader Bashar al-Assad.
After several days of bloodshed, Ahmed Alshara, the military leader who overthrew Syrian interim president Assad, signed a temporary constitution on Thursday, which has been under Muslim control for at least five years.
However, Al-Shara’s government has followed low-level officers who were drafted into Assad’s army along with Alawi and Christian minorities, among other things, “revenge killings.”
“They couldn’t refuse [military service]. Those who refused were put in prison,” he said.
Syrian religious genocide shows what Europe needs to “look closely” about the Islamist regime: Greek FM
People gather on December 8th to celebrate the collapse of the Syrian regime at Umayyad Square in Damascus, Syria, and wave their guns in the air. (Ali Haji Suleiman/Getty Images)
While much of Syria was pleased to see Bashar al-Assad’s outcasts, religious and ethnic minorities remain skeptical of the new leader once linked to al-Qaeda.
Ribal Al-Assad argued that the new regime is “Islamic caliphate. They want theocratic politics. They want to replace dictatorship with cults, as happened in Iran 45 years ago.”
He said that Christians got caught up with Alawis along with the revenge, because “Christians and Alawis live together. In my town, we always live in line, and they celebrate the holidays together.”
In December, the Biden administration removed a long-standing bounty to head of HTS leader Ahmed Alshara.
Europe suspended various sanctions on the new Syrian government later last month, but there are many other punitive financial measures in the United States as well.
“After 14 years of devastation of so many mass murders, you know, for example, you know, and Europeans lifted this terrorist regime and said, “Oh, there’s a snapback sanction if this regime is reconsidered.”
“What’s worse? [HTS] Would you not let them recover? ”
Israel faces a new Syrian challenge to adapt to new strategies amid regional power struggles for influence
Al Assad tore the European Commission for inviting Al Sharaa to a donor meeting to raise funds for his government.
“European countries” [are going] To give him money, to give him more money, he can encourage and reward him for the murders he has done.
Government forces crushed the rebellion that had begun last week by armed militias loyal to Assad.
People demonstrate those who oppose the constitutional declaration signed on March 14, 2025 by Syrian interim president Ahmed Alshara, in Kamishri, Syria, and signed on March 14, 2025 (Reuters/Orhan Kaleman).
And rights groups say hundreds of civilians, primarily belonging to the Islamic Alawite minority, counting Assad as members, have died in violence erupting along Syrian coasts.
The Syrian Human Rights Observatory (SOHR) claims that nearly 1,000 civilians have been killed in violence over the past week.
Thousands of civilians who fled sectarian violence are still evacuated at Russian air force bases along Latakia, according to Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Bipartisan law seeks to curb Erdogan’s turkey over our connections
“According to data yesterday, it evacuated more than 9,000 Syrians, mostly close to women and children,” she said Thursday.
The inclusion of families, women and children was massacred as part of last week’s sectarian killing, the United Nations said.
Alshara claimed that the government would investigate “investigating violations against civilians and identifying who are responsible for them.”
The UN Human Rights Office has counted the killings of 111 civilians, and it expects this figure to be much higher.
“In many very disturbing cases, the whole family, including combat of women, children and individual horses, was killed in the cities and villages of primarily Alawites, especially targeted, and mostly Alawites,” said Thameen Al Kheetan, a spokesman for the UN Human Rights Office, on Tuesday.
“Many of the documented cases were summaries executions. They appear to have been carried out on a sectarian basis.”
Abdulhamid al-Awak, part of the committee that Alshara was tasked with creating a new constitution that would set up a transitional government for five years, said in a press conference on Thursday that the constitution requires heads of state to be Muslims and that Islamic law is the main source of jurisprudence.
People demonstrate those who oppose the constitutional declaration signed on March 14, 2025 by Syrian interim president Ahmed Alshara, in Kamishri, Syria, and signed on March 14, 2025 (Reuters/Orhan Kaleman).
However, Al Awaq said the constitution includes free expression and protection of the media.
“There are many, many, many, many, many clauses in that constitution,” said Al Assad.
“The transition period is five years, but can be extended indefinitely based on security and political conditions. What does that mean?
“President, he was able to appoint a third of Congress full legislative power. This is also crazy. At this point, all political parties are suspended. There is no opposition or expression.”
The document, Al-Awak said, is a “balance between social security and freedom” during a rocky political situation.
The Constitution also argues that the state “promised to combat all forms of violent extremism, while respecting rights and freedoms,” and that “citizens are equal before the law of rights and obligations, without discrimination based on race, religion, gender, or systematics.”
It banned weapons outside of military control and cracked down on “praiseing the former Assad regime” as a crime.
Ribal Al-Assad and Syrian protests (Reuters)
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Council on Friday rejected the draft document and called for it to be rewritten, claiming it was not sufficient to protect many ethnic communities in Syria. He argued that the Constitution “recreated authoritarianism in a new form,” saying that “the constitutional declaration must be the result of a genuine national consensus, not a project imposed by one party.”
Click here to get the Fox News app
Al Assad has called on the US to intervene to help Syria establish a “real representative democracy.”
“This is definitely not what the Syrians were looking for, people who opposed the previous regime. This is not the government they wanted,” he said. “And this is why we want the United States to help us move towards a truly representative democracy.
“How will we start recruiting thousands of people in the Mediterranean, run by Islamic extremists?
“They could be in Cyprus, and Greek islands and Europe to the US in two and a half hours, then to the US. …I remember what al-Qaeda did when I was in Afghanistan, and Afghanistan is not in the Mediterranean.”
Source link
