Are Belgian jihadists committing murder near Aleppo?

Published on 10 June 2013 at 14:46

"A Belgian is leading killing sprees and rapes against 'non-believers,'" in Syria, reads a headline in Belgian daily De Standaard, following the discovery, on June 7, of a web video dated last March. It shows the decapitation, by a group of jihadists, some of them Flemish-speaking, of a man presumed to be Shia. "There are chances that the execution was linked to Hussain Elouassaki, a 22-year-old nursing aid for the handicapped from Vilvorde," near Brussels, writes the paper, adding –

“>Telephone surveillance and the questioning of combatants returning from Syria made available to newspaper De Morgen, show that a group of 35 to 40 Belgians has settled around Aleppo. They are under the command of Hussain Elouassaki, who left for Syria in September. In a telephone conversation with his brother Abdelouafi [...] he explained how he had decapitated someone and how he had raped and murdered 30 women.

The paper reports that among the 600 to 700 European combatants in Syria, most of the Belgians are "closely or distantly, linked to Sharia4Belgium. [...] Those who are complicit in this execution are liable to life imprisonment in our country."

In De Morgen's leader article entitled "Our boys in Syria," Yves Desmet is indignant in front of "the banalisation of evil" demonstrated by the combatants –

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How did these guys arrive at such a transformation? [...] From being pariahs in a country that did not want them, they suddenly became heroes in a holy war. It is not surprising. At the same time, it is a cold comfort to know that most of them never want to return [to Belgium].

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