“Torturing the civilian Ali al-Faraj by the Turkish-backed (Sunni Hawks) faction is the third case in a month,” head of the SDF’s media office Farhad Shami said in a tweet. He shared a graphic video of a number of men torturing a naked, bound man.
According to Shami, this occurred in Suluk, near the border town of Gire Spi (Tal Abyad).
Faraj described what happened to him in a video published on YouTube. He said that he was kidnapped by two armed men from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) who were later arrested and were revealed to be members of the Turkish-backed Sunni Hawks.
The Turkish-backed Syrian National Army, also known as the FSA, is a collection of militias that Ankara has used as boots on the ground in its offensives in northern Syria against Kurdish forces, the People’s Protection Units (YPG) that lead the SDF. Kurds accuse the SNA of absorbing former fighters of the Islamic State (ISIS) and adopting ideology and tactics of the terror group.
“They took me to a pick-up car by a motorbike. There they blindfolded me and took me to a place that I didn’t recognize. They tortured me and recorded a video in which they told me what to say. I did as they wanted,” Faraj said, adding that he was later “thrown” in an area near his village.
Turkish-backed groups have been widely accused of human rights violations in the Kurdish areas in Syria. Last year, the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria said in a report that it believes SNA fighters have committed multiple war crimes in areas of northern Syria where they seized control from Kurdish fighters.
Amnesty International also reported scores of violations against civilians in Syria in its annual 2020 report, especially in Afrin, a region in northwestern Syria that Turkish forces and their Syrian proxies seized control of in 2018. In January, sixteen people, including two minors, were kidnapped and tortured in Afrin and were later released.
The T’azur Organization, which advocates for people whose rights have been violated in areas seized by Turkey and their proxies, said it has documented 377 arrests of civilians in Gire Spi and Sari Kani (Ras al-Ain) in the past two years, among them are 45 women.
“Two hundred and twenty-six of them were subjected to torture in prison and at least three others lost their lives under torture in jail. All these violations pass without accountability or punishment, because they are committed by SNA, which is supported by Turkey,” T’azur Organization executive director Ezzedine Saleh told Rudaw.
Gire Spi and the neighboring Sari Kani were under SDF control until Turkey invaded in October 2019. Both towns were Kurdish-majority and the majority of the population has fled to other areas under the control of the SDF.
