Outgoing President Joe Biden's administration on Friday offered a reward for information leading to the capture of Syria's de facto leader Ahmed al-Shallah, formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani. Canceled.
Sharaa abandoned the holy warriors nom de guerre This month, the head of the jihadist terrorist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) will be inaugurated. U.S. officials do not appear to have removed HTS from the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations, but after Friday's meeting with a jihadist commander and a high-level State Department delegation, they decided to stop offering incentives to capture Shara'a. agreed.
HTS is an offshoot of al-Qaeda, formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra. HTS has a storied history as a Sunni jihadist terrorist organization, but it bills itself as the most prominent Syrian organization opposed to former dictator Bashar al-Assad, and in late November it launched an attack on Aleppo, the country's second-largest city. He achieved a successful conquest and decisively asserted the leadership of the opposition. city. After the fall of Aleppo, Assad's forces collapsed and his regime lasted less than two weeks before the HTS reached Damascus city limits.
President Assad left the country sometime between December 7 and December 8, receiving political asylum in Russia. In his absence, Sharaa took the helm of the country. Since then, he has shed his jihadi moniker, swapped his military uniform for a Western-style suit and sought to persuade the West to invest in his success, despite widespread concerns that he would impose totalitarianism. A media blitz operation was launched with the aim of sharia Standards for the diverse Syrian population.
After speaking with Sharaa in Damascus, top US diplomat for the Middle East, Barbara Leaf, told reporters that Sharaa was “realistic” and that Sharaa was enjoyed A “very good, very productive and detailed” conversation with Sharaa. In light of this conversation, Leaf said, “I informed him that I would not be pursuing Justice's Compensation Offer.”
Rewards for Justice is a program that offers rewards for arresting terrorists. page Information regarding Sharaa is listed at the time of reporting.
Before Friday, the U.S. government had offered $10 million for information leading to his arrest.
Before the page was removed, the Rewards for Justice program explained Sharaa is the head of Jabhat al-Nusra and masterminds “several terrorist attacks across Syria, often targeting civilians.”
“April 2015, ANF [the Nusra Front] “Approximately 300 Kurdish civilians were reportedly kidnapped from a checkpoint in Syria and later released,” Rewards for Justice recalled. “In June 2015, the ANF claimed responsibility for the massacre of 20 residents in Qalb Rause, a Druze village in Syria's Idlib province.''
Shara'a was designated as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist.” A check of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions list on Friday afternoon still showed pull Sharaa was arrested as a specially designated global terrorist under the name “Abu Muhammad Al Jaulani”.
In a recent interview with Western media, he said: busy Sharaa told the BBC this week that HTS was “not a terrorist organization” and admitted to using violence against Assad military personnel, but insisted it did not target civilians. He also claimed that he did not support imposing Islamic fundamentalist rule on the Syrian people, insisted that Afghans were a “tribal” people, rejected comparisons to the Taliban's Afghanistan, and that Syrians He suggested that such a system was too advanced to accept.
“The Syrian people have lived together for thousands of years,” he asserted. “We're going to discuss everything, we're going to have dialogue, we're going to make sure everyone is represented. The old regime always exploited sectarian divisions, but we don't.”
But when asked if she would allow people to practice basic civil liberties, such as consuming and selling alcohol, which is a fundamental right of women, Schaller said she was the ultimate authority on those subjects. suggested that it would not. He pledged in interviews that he would allow girls and women to attend school and insisted that he would not persecute Christians or Kurds, but when it came to the issue of alcohol, he said this was a “legal matter” to be dealt with by the appropriate judicial authorities. , argued otherwise. he.
Mr Sharrer has passionately reiterated his promise to lead an “inclusive” government in Syria, but early reports about who is amassing power in Damascus alarmed international observers. Emirate Newspaper is Nationwide reported This week it was revealed that HTS has empowered extremist clerics to dispense justice at the local level, and that many of those holding key government positions are high-ranking HTS terrorists.
“Nearly all of the new appointees are members of HTS, its ideological twin, the rebel group Ahrar al-Sham, and Syrian Muslims who are quickly finding new political life by aligning with him. They are elected officials from the Brotherhood,” the newspaper said. Nationwide Reported. “Already some city residents are worried about the influx of people into Damascus either as visitors or as members of the new HTS order.”
Before the fall of Damascus, Shara'a also warned non-Islamists in the country: tell CNN, “Those who fear Islamic rule are either implementing it incorrectly or do not understand it correctly.”
