ICC Note: Another report has emerged from Syria documenting the brutal killing of two Armenian Christians who have been captured and held by the al Qaeda-linked extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Levant. The influx of foreign Jihadist fighters has escalated the conflict and has made the situation even more dangerous for the Syrian Christian community. This is just the latest report from a conflict that has taken more than 110,000 lives.
1/09/2014 Syria (MidEast Christian News) – Daash groups beheaded two members of the Armenian community who were detained with them at a detention facility, according to civilian Kurds who managed to escape from the detention of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Daash) in the village of Deir Hassan, Dana, Idlib.
According to Ishtar TV channel, 10 citizens who had been kidnapped by groups affiliated to Daash fled detention in the village of Deir Hassan in Dana and returned home to the town of Afrin in Aleppo.
Rashid Arif, one of those who escaped, said elements of Daash brought two Armenians to the camp where they were detained. After a week they took them out of the prison and several hours later one of the kidnappers came back carrying a biscuit box and asked them to open and eat. When the detainees opened the box, they found the head of one of the two Armenians who were with them in prison. The kidnapper threatened to behead the other detainees in the coming days.
Aslan Mannan, one of the escaped detainees, spoke about the practices of the members of the Daash organization against them while they were in detention. He said they were verbally abused and asked about the locations of the units that are protecting the people and about the names of the members of the popular councils and civil society institutions.
Mannan said that the kidnappers offered them one meal every 24 hours, which consisted of a loaf of bread and their leftovers, in addition to half a liter of water every two days.
Relatedly, the iNews Facebook page published a picture of a young man and said activists circulated the picture as being a young Armenian man in Syria named Minas.
The page noted that the young man was killed in a prison of Daash in the city of Aleppo, northern Syria. The picture shows a young man wearing clothes of the Armenian Evangelical Church in Aleppo.
“Minas and his father spent 115 days in the prison of Daash, according to one of the activists, on charges of not embracing Islam,” the page said.
The Armenian News website reported earlier a news story about forcing Armenian families to convert to Islam.
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