Al Qaeda Group To Try 45 Captured U.N. Peacekeepers Under ‘Divine Law’
The Al Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra Front rebel forces, which captured 45 UN peacekeepers from Fiji on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights last Wednesday, said the captured men are to stand trial, Sharia style.
Obviously, as the men are all observers from the UN, the militant group has no right whatsoever to put these innocent soldiers on any kind of trial, let alone a “divine” one as prescribed by the Koran.
Nevertheless, Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the commander of Al-Nusra Front announced that the 45 peacekeepers will be tried under “divine law,” as reported to Asharq Al-Aswat.
The Independent reported on Monday that the militants had issued three demands for the release of the peacekeepers, each of which are as absurd as any demands made by modern-day Islamic terrorists, These are the demands:
- The Group is to be taken off the UN terrorist list
- Humanitarian aid to be delivered to parts of the Syrian capital Damascus
- Compensation for three of its fighters it claims were killed in a shootout with UN officers
Nice try Al-Nusra, but not likely to happen. Didn’t anyone tell the group that the west, and especially the UN, would never negotiate with terrorists?
Of course, the swift response from the 15 members of the UN Security Council, ignored those demands and called for the “immediate and unconditional release” of the soldiers, denouncing their abduction “in the strongest terms.”
As well as the 45 Fijian peacekeepers captured in Syria, 72 Filipino troops were surrounded by the Al-Nusra forces. Fortunately, the two units of soldiers from the Philippines managed to escaped over the weekend into Israel.
The captured soldiers make up part of the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) established in 1974 to maintain the ceasefire between Syria and Israel.
If past “trials” carried out by Islamist militant are anything to go by, the 45 peacekeepers may well get beheaded, after having been tortured and humiliated like American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, at the hands of ISIS militants.
