Videos have surfaced online of Syria’s new justice minister, Shadi al-Waisi, overseeing the execution of two women in 2015 over charges of adultery and prostitution.
Al-Waisi is part of the new Syrian government led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which took power after ousting former President Bashar al-Assad on December 8.
Verify-Sy, a fact-checking organization, confirmed that it was al-Waisi in the two videos that emerged online. In one video, al-Waisi is seen reading a ruling that the woman was found guilty of “corruption and prostitution” and sentencing her to death.
In the other video, al-Waisi appears to be carrying a gun and tells a woman to sit down as she’s pleading for her life. Once she moves down, another armed man shoots her in the head.
At the time, al-Waisi was working as a “judge” enforcing Sharia law in areas of Syria’s northwest Idlib province that were under the control of the al-Nusra Front, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria that merged with other Islamist groups in 2017 to form HTS.
HTS and its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Julani, who has been going by his real name Ahmad al-Sharaa, have tried to present themselves as moderates since taking over Syria despite their al-Qaeda past.
An HTS official speaking to Verify-Sy downplayed the video, insisting the group has “moved beyond” such practices. “The content of the video presented to us documents the enforcement of the law at a specific time and place, where the procedures were carried out in accordance with the laws in effect at that time and as part of a procedural agreement. However, we would like to point out that this process reflects a stage we have moved beyond,” the official said.
The US supported the HTS takeover of Syria even though the group still being listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department. US officials also seem to be buying the rebranding campaign despite HTS’s brutal history and its appointment of foreign jihadists in senior military positions.
Barbara Leaf, a senior State Department official, recently held a meeting with Julani, which she said was “good” and “productive,” and announced afterward that the US was removing a $10 million bounty from his head.
Maybe we can send Guliani to be al Julani's new Justice Minister, he can't be worse, can he?
It's not a maybe that you need to learn basic reasoning.
What a cheap shot at Giuliani, a fine man, one million times the man a leftist like you could ever be.
Give us a good laugh, cite for us one example of Rudy persecuting women.
Giuliani is a shambling pile of feces in a human-shaped bag.
Slightly, grossly poetic TK!…
So, what have you got against feces?
” a fine man”
The stupid is strong in this one, Obi Wan . . .
He was a "fine man" at one point in time. And than he went off the rails and because crazy.
When was he a “fine man?”
When, as a US attorney, he became the architect of the wiretap surveillance state, the predecessor to the panopticon we have now?
Or when, as mayor of New York City before 9/11, he moved the city’s emergency response HQ to the obvious ground zero of any likely terror attack, while failing to act (apparently the kickbacks weren’t acceptably high) on the finding from the FIRST WTC attack that there needed to be a common communications setup for all of the city’s first responders so that, say, a bunch of cops in a stairwell wouldn’t die because they couldn’t hear the fire department warning to GTFO?
Or when, as mayor of New York City after 9/11, he failed to enforce health and safety measures at Ground Zero, then screwed over the city workers who ended up sick and/or dead?
Or when, as a candidate for the presidency, he pretended to be shocked at the obviously true claim that 9/11 was exactly the kind of blowback to be expected from an interventionist foreign policy?
A cruel ongoing streak of misogyny is spewing in the West as it disregards the abasement, abuse, and abnegation of women — in Britain by well-documented but ignored Pakistani rape gangs, in Sweden, Germany, elsewhere — and now by the politically motivated and disgusting backing of HTS in Syria. Is this what the vaunted rule of law and values of Western Civilization have come to? Western politicians are cowards, blackguards — don't ask me what I'd like to see them suffer.
Not even the western nations have been able to agree on a common 'rule of law' – you may be aware that e.g. the US is not in the ICC.
Moreover even the ICC does not have any jurisdiction over what amounts to national matters (i.e. what a nation does to its own citizens within its own borders).
So what the UK, Sweden or Germany does about potential gangs of rapists would not be a matter for any international courts – as long as it did not involve human rights violations.
However most western nations do have a values based policy when it comes to foreign aid – which is seldom applied to penalize prior bad behavior, but often applied to incentivize future 'better' behavior.
Hence support for the new Syrian administration is likely to be contingent upon them e.g. not implementing Sharia law.
“The content of the video presented to us documents the enforcement of the law at a specific time and place, where the procedures were carried out in accordance with the laws in effect at that time and as part of a procedural agreement. However, we would like to point out that this process reflects a stage we have moved beyond,” the official said.
This guy is actually talking as if those laws were somebody else's laws and not HTS' own. But hey, they've moved beyond that. I'm wondering if all "terrorist" groups can now get off the hook by claiming they've moved "beyond" terrorism or do they have to overthrow one of the governments on our regime change list first.
It's easy to see the flow of propaganda on the Syrian coup.
Firstly, since it was done by the west, it is cast in a favorable light. We are supposed to be happy that good men took over. (What really happened is that a foe of the west was overthrown by Islamists.) Notice that the MSM will not cover the carpet bombing by the USA and Israel.
Later, as the radicalism becomes apparent, Syria will again be used as a example of terrorism which must be wiped out. The west and Israel need enemies. so they create enemies. Attacks on Syria will continue.
But… but… they are "polite" and almost woke, right? They didn't behead Annalena Baerboek, they just erased her from the pictures. º.º
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/97a2ad6f7f1b892792ce285ea8190f4b1d45e77fd665809d5720a6f452b525c1.png
Seriously: there are so many acts of terror by the fascists in Syria now that everyone who can is organizing into armed communities for self-defense. The German show of "diplomacy" only shows their despicable pathetic subservience to the USA, Turkey and Israel. I could have never imagined anything like this.